A Moment with My Brother
by DeansBabyBird
Summary: Just a little late night conversation between Charlie and her big brother. Some season eight spoilers. Thanks to the CW for such great characters. Wish they were mine.
1. Chapter 1

**A Moment with My Brother...**

Chapter One. Late Night, the Bunker.

I know in my logical geek brain that the bunker's dogged down so tight with every warding sigil known that it's virtually impenetrable and my slightly compulsive, 'Charlie-You-don't-need-to-check-the-door-again' rituals add a whole other layer of OCD inspired security.

So I'm pretty sure that the subdued mumbling and clattering about coming from the kitchen is one or other of my adopted-siblings, that or our now earth-bound, quasi-human angel but until I'm sure it is one of them simply performing some hunter-esque, early-morning task, I feel it's best to play safe.

Thus, I heft my Moondore broad sword a little tighter and carefully push open the door just in case a pack of rabid were-kittens or some such supernatural thing have forced their way into our quirkily comfortable home as we all slumbered peaceably in our memory-foam havens.

Don't smile indulgently like that!

I'm right to be cautious.

A modern girl about town must always look to her safety.

However, we are feline and/or other preternatural visitor free and I think I must have let out a little sigh of relief because Dean...yes, it's big brother who's standing with his bloodstained hand dripping over the old porcelain of the sink...Dean whips round, spraying droplets of cheerful crimson as he turns his face to me.

His expression is a mixture of guilt and...and something else that I'm not sure I have a total handle on yet but whatever it is...and I will work it out...it's over-laying a pallor that's a little worrying.

So knowing the coast is clear, I park the Moondore Slayer and move quickly to his side, grabbing the tea-towel as I pass the table.

"What happened?"

I'm go to wrap his hand in the clean towel as I note there's broken crockery in the big sink and blood trails from there, up the side and over onto the floor at Dean's bare feet.

He huffs out a sign that's part irritation and part resignation at being caught, and knowing him, I recognize that all his instincts are telling him to brush the injury, and me, away with a 'it's nothing' or 'I'm fine'.

Thus when he doesn't, when he actually let's me take his hand and gently fold the cloth around it, I am both surprised and, to be honest, more than a little...well...touched. It's a trust thing see? Dean doesn't give his trust easily and the simple action of letting me look after him, if only for a moment, is a big give for this man.

Awh, I know you think I'm being sappy but really Dean's damaged-psyche socks are on so tight most of the time that he even finds it difficult to let Sam see when he's hurting so in letting me...well, let's just say it makes me go all warm with sweet sibling sentimentality.

"I cut my hand."

His voice is soft and I sneak a concerned peek at his face as I cajole him onto the chair I've wheedled out from under the table with my delicately feminine foot. Hey, stop that laughing! I'm tall alright. I'd look stupid with tiny feet.

"You don't say."

I whistle appreciatively as I draw back the towel and peruse his skillfully filleted palm and fingers. My raised eyebrows say 'No shit, Captain Obvious!' but in a kind sisterly way.

"It's not so bad. Don't fuss..."

He says as he smiles to reassure me but it's a weary, I-feel-a-bit-wobbly-but-I'm-not-gonna-admit-it sorta smile and we both know, that we both know that, but we have a silent understanding so I nod back, pretending I'm convinced.

"Can you move your fingers?"

He does, and they squelch and little bloody bubbles burst from the ragged incised lines but he doesn't even gasp. Tough cookies these hunters and he upholds our silent pact and pretends not to notice back when I do gasp a little.

"So you cut it...how?"

I rise as I speak and pad over the cold tile to the shelf where I know we have sited one of the numerous first-aid boxes the MoL's have bestowed on us. It's another of my minor OCD quirks. Always like to have an eye-patch and a triangular bandage to hand.

His eyes follow me as I grab the box and return to his side and he's all fluttery eyelashes and wide, wide, green, so damn green eyes.

"I was bringing the mugs back from Sam's room..."

He's intent on the little row of items I'm lifting from the box and laying out neatly on the table and it distracts him from his answer. They have to be neat. Lack of symmetry is freakzoid freaky for me.

"You'll need the butterfly strips."

He observes and his un-damaged hand hovers for the medicinal treasures. I gently but meaningfully push him aside.

"I know, keep your mitts off. I'm just deciding which size to use."

I chide him effectively and he drops his hand back to the table. I don't think he realizes but he rests it carefully on his wounded forearm defensively. I guess he unconsciously knows that what is to come will be unpleasant. He's done this many many times.

He doesn't go to carry on speaking, like maybe he thinks 'I was bringing the mugs back from Sam's room' should tell me all I need to know? But it doesn't - I'm a details girl. So as I rise again and find a bowl to fill with warm water to wash the cuts, I prompt him gently.

"So you were carrying a mug..."

His eyes find mine and he takes a second to have them focus.

"Yeah...Sam'd been coughing a lot so I'd made him some tea with honey in. It seems to help...soothes the coughing..."

He tails off again as I sit and place the bowl down beside the towel that is our makeshift operating theatre drape.

"Is he okay now?"

Dean smiles, one of his rare unguarded 'my brother's slowly getting well' smiles and even pale and a little shaky as he it, it lights up the room.

"Yeah, he got off to sleep pretty quick this time. You know I really don't think he's coughing as much anymore."

His face lifts to mine as he says this and there's a hint of the desperate need he has for that to be true lilting under the ever present facade of sorted-out-ness that is part of his armour.

I smile for him partly cause I'm happy it really is true but mostly because I realize how essential it is to him for it to, indeed, be true.

"Shhhhtt!"

He hisses through his teeth as I bathe the biggest of the cuts. It's deep and wends lazily from his thumb, across his palm like a little red salmon run.

"Sorry."

I offer in apology and I mean it, but I know he bears me no malice. He's sat through this and this, only likely a hundred times worse, in his relatively short life.

"So..?"

I prompt some more.

"So what?"

He's confused. Doesn't know what I'm 'so what-ing' at. I hear it in his voice so I glance up and look questioningly again and it kicks starts his memory.

"Oh yeah...so I figured I'd wash them, the mugs, cause there was a plate as well from earlier when I'd taken Cas a sandwich. So I'd got water in the bowl and I was going to put the mugs in the sink but...I don't really know...I guess I dropped them..."

He pauses, drawing in his breath again as I pat dry the now clean cuts. They must sting like the devil.

"Gotta let your skin dry a little or the butterfly strips will never stick."

I say and I cover his hand with the towel as he nods, seeing the sense in my thought pattern.

We sit quietly, he swaying just the slightest bit and me watching his face.

He looks pale and I notice now that his eyes are smudged with grey shadows. His cheek bones are more prominent than they were and his reassuring stockiness has become somewhat leaner.

I get to thinking about how he's always up before I am but never goes to his memory-foam nest till long after we all do. He does the laundry and most of the supply runs and then in the wee small hours, there's always Sam's tea to get or Cas's sometimes frayed, 'it-overwhelms-me-in-the-night' nerves to sooth.

Plus when I think about it, Dean cooks 90% of our meals now and we eat well. Bread made from scratch to cradle his famous burgers, no additives and e-numbers as he wants Sam to be strong enough to heft more than a soup spoon before he's exhausted.

Yet, and boy, this rocks me back on my heels, he doesn't really eat that much himself anymore. When I think about it, he picks more than pigs out, nibbles more than gorges. Oh he smiles when we eat, but the smiles he craves, Sam's and Cas's and mine now, distract him from his own plate.

And now I've seen that but for all that I can't be mad with him cause it's working. Sam is looking stronger by the day and Cas has less bouts of intractable sorrow and guilt over the fall of his brethren and I feel...I feel so wonderfully 'at home'. So effortlessly safe. So finally goddamned loved.

But sudden realization hits me that all this, our splendid, wonderful recovery is coming at a cost. A silent, slow ebbing of Dean's strength cost and I'm suddenly scared to death for my big brother and angry at myself for not seeing it sooner.

"When did you last get a full nights sleep?"

I keep my words soft and non-judgmental but even slow from fatigue and in pain from his injuries, he's sharp and onto me.

"I sleep."

His head has come up and he's all tense denial.

"I don't mean half hour naps in the chair, Dean."

And he shakes his head but doesn't say anything. His eyes are turning broody. The vibrant green darkening to something much more intimidating and if I didn't love him like I do, I'd back down cause shit! He's scary.

"Did the mug just break or did you go a bit dizzy and drop it?"

He doesn't answer and doesn't allow me his gaze either cause he knows his eyes always give him away. The are too telling of his feelings to let me see them if he wants to hide and pretend it's all fine.

"Do you feel dizzy still?"

He huffs in irritation. It's a 'back off Charlie' huff but I don't.

"Well?"

I stare at his cheek as his head is still turned from me. A little tickle of sweat slips from his hairline to the notch of his too prominent jaw. Seconds tick noisily by in the deafening silence but I hold my ground.

He'll break before I do. Girls are better at waiting it out than boys.

I'm right..he fills the silence first.

"It's just a cut hand, Charlie. Don't make a big deal of it."

It's my turn to huff now in exasperation.

"You're running yourself into the ground looking after us."

It's a simple statement of fact. Not really meant as a criticism but more as a loving expression of worry but his body stiffens further and he does that thing where his jaw tenses cause he's clenching his teeth to keep from shouting.

And I feel bad cause my wanting to show him I care for him has made him angry and defensive. Dammit Charlie! You're a heavy-handed Nancy sometimes.

I'm trying to work out how to sweet talk him when suddenly before my eyes his whole posture softens and his gaze wavers hesitantly back to mine.

Anger has given way to exhaustion and he looks young and a little lost.

"I...I'd only walked up the corridor but when I got to the sink...I don't know...I just got all...kinda...blah."

He looks at me to see if I get 'blah' and I do so I nod, my eyes saying 'yeah Dean I get it'. Blah is woozy, nauseous, so tired the mug slips from you hand and your hand follows it down as you go rubber legged and somehow the shards of it tear at your flesh.

And he nods, knowing I know.

"Shall I tell you what's so damn crappy about it?"

His voice is a little strained, like his throat is tightening but his eyes are wide as saucers.

"That you cut your hand and it hurts?"

He laughs and shakes his head at my Captain Obviousness.

"Nah..."

I quirk my eyebrow, saying 'what then?'

"I really liked that mug."

He sounds so sad and I almost smile cause that much feeling can't really be associated with a cheap piece of crockery but I don't because being allowed to see this far into Dean's emotions is a rare privilege. So I wait a bit to see what else tumbles out of him.

"It was my favorite. When I make Sammy his tea or take Cas a coffee then that's the mug I always use for my coffee. It's my...bunker mug. It's mine and I don't have much that's mine..."

He halts abruptly, the constriction in his voice choking off his words and I can see he's breathing fast and kinda staccato. It's making me a little scared and my mouth rattles of the first dumb thing that comes into my head cause I want him not to be sad over such a stupid thing.

"We'll get you a new mug..."

And he's on his feet, suddenly angry as fuck and swiping the first aid box onto the floor with his injured hand before I can stop him. He hisses at the pain it causes him.

"I don't want a new mug, dammit!"

He's shouting now and it's way more angry than I understand and I'm really scared.

"I'm sorry."

I raise my hands in a placatory fashion, not certain where all this rage can have come from but I guess, even though I try not to show it I look scared enough that it registers with him cause he sags and looses it as quickly as it came.

He flops immediately the adrenaline leaves him and it's fortunate he's not really moved his feet, so his boneless fall deposits him gracelessly more or less back on his chair. His sore hand bangs, edge down, on the table and little splatters of blood spray, CSI- fashion onto the wooden surface.

It causes him to pull it in toward him, cradling the crimsoned flesh to his tattered old t-shirt. Ouchie!

We reverberate for a second or two in the vibration of his suddenly dissipated rage before he surprisingly, softly, breaks the silence.

"Don't want some other mug, Charlie."

His words are so quiet I have to drop to his level and crane my neck toward him to hear. He looks at me then and his eyes are too sad, just way too sad to put a description to.

"Don't want any old mug. Want that one."

He's biting his lip now and his eyes are huge and iridescent with moisture.

"It was my mug, Charlie. Mine and I bust it."

I nod now because suddenly I understand his code. My mug really means I want Sam well and safe. I want Cas to not feel the whole weight of heaven pressing upon him. It means I've seen too much, been hurt too much and this mask I wear is so brittle that I don't know if I can hold it in place.

Yeah, that's it. 'My mug' means all that when you understand the code and now, cause we're family, I understand the code.

I move carefully closer to him now, nodding all the time, my face soft with compassion for him. It's a delicate as approaching any other wounded animal. I know if I get it wrong he'll bolt or bite or something.

I can think of a hundred things I want to say to him. It'll be alright. Sam's getting better. Cas will learn to forgive himself but I know they'll come out wrong so I opt for kneeling in front of him to buy a moments thinking time.

His breathing is still rapid and he's white as a sheet.

"You're tired."

It's not a question more an observation and he knows that I know I'm right. He nods just slightly and I take it as the permission I think he wants it to be and lean toward him.

I wrap my arms around him carefully, like he's fragile because for tonight, he is and I want him to know that it's okay. I can be his strength for a few hours. In fact I'm honoured to be that if he'll let me.

His cheek nestles into my shoulder and I move my hands in little circles on his back. I've seen him do this for Sam so I know it's a touch he understands and will therefore allow.

And so we rest a while.

And I don't mind that the shoulder of my hoody get damp with his quiet tears and my soft circles tell him that no one but us will know.

Because he's my brother now and I love him as I know he loves me.

And I'm so happy that he lets me, if only for tonight, have his back.

**Ends**

**Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed it.**


	2. Chapter 2 I'm just saying that's weird

**A Moment with My Brother**

**I'm just saying it's weird, that's all...**

"I'm just saying it's weird, that's all..."

There's like a nano-second...no, no make that a femto-second lag and then Dean and I snort in alluring, totally non-geeky, sibling unison at Sam who's sitting across the table from us looking adorably offended at our shared hysteria at his sage observation.

"What's so funny?"

He sulks, his earnest face drawing full-on guffaws from the pair of us.

"You are!"

Dean giggles and high fives me as Sam slams his fork down next to his half finished dinner.

"It is weird..."

He spits petulantly and folds his impossibly long arms across his chest as he glowers at first Dean before turning to me. The elder Winchester grins his guaranteed '1000 mega-watt of irritation' grin at his baby brother and I only just manage to get my feet out of the way as Sam's giraffe-long leg kicks crunchily against Dean's too-tardy shin.

"Owhhh!"

He's had worse and we all know that but he's totally in the zone so Dean goes for absolute diva, scoots back his chair and pulls his leg up to rub dramatically at his bruised skin.

"No need to get violent, Samantha!"

He spits back and I see immediately where Sam gets his Oscar-nominated sulkiness from. This hunter could out-cry Halle Berry and would look nearly as pretty in the frock.

Dean's face is a study in offended, petulant annoyance and I say a secret prayer that my new-found and much loved sibling bond with them will not, by association, actually corrupt my pristine deoxyribonucleic acid double helix with their clearly dodgy genes.

"See..."

Sam points his finger accusingly across the expanse of the Bunker's big library table as Dean rolls up the leg of his jeans.

"You're only acting up cause you're mad at me cause you know I'm right...you know you're eating habits are weird...along with most of the rest of your habits."

Sam declares authoritatively but Dean blanks him...level two, maybe three, of his annoyance strategy coming into play...and looks to me. He's looking to recruit me as his noble sidekick in the 'annoy-the-lanky-one' war. Me, Kimosabe!

"Do you think my tibia is fractured, Charlie? I think gigantor busted my leg."

He waggles the offended limb toward me pathetically and I play along cause really...it's just too much fun not to play 'Rile the Winchester' at every opportunity I get.

"Well...it's a bit bowed."

Sam snorts derisively now and rocks back on his chair in that way rangy men do.

"It was always bowed, Shorty. If your legs were straight you'd be 7ft tall."

Dean glares at him and, sensing an advantage, Sam presses on.

"And it **is **weird to eat all your vegetables, one sort at a time, before you even take a bite of your steak."

"Oh is it now, Samantha..."

Dean's dropped his foot back down now and he's leaning across the table, glowering balefully at his smirking brother and I wanna laugh so hard that I think I might just pee my pants cause they are both so unconsciously alike and so similarly freaking adorable.

"Well, for your information, Professor Pavlov, I'm just saving the best bit till last, that's all. Nothing weird in that."

Dean thumps the table for emphasis and his fork clatters noisily against his plate - the plate from which he ate first every bite of his baked potato, before every green bean, before cutting a single bite of his juicy, best-till-last steak and yeah...now I think about it that is kinda weird.

"And anyhow, Mr Weirdy McWeirdington, at least I don't have a break down if I can't find a pair of socks that match."

Dean grins evilly and Sam pouts dramatically.

"I knew it...Dean, you are a total bitch. You do that on purpose don't ya? Deliberately mess 'em up after I've paired them?"

"Now, now, boys..."

I intervene and to my surprise they both quieten and look expectantly at me. Wow! I am the ringmaster...mistress...to their prancing performing ponies.

And for all this is great fun, I can sense the crack building to the point where violence may ensue and there are way too many weapons in the bunker to trust my wonderfully stupid, testosterone-fueled brothers to not hurt themselves.

"I have pie and ice cream for dessert but neither of you will get any unless you play nice."

I say it in my 'hair-in-a-bun, spectacles-on-the-end-of-my-nose' school-ma'am voice and they both play along, nodding in a pretend shame-faced sorta way as I heft the pie from the end of the table.

"So Sam..."

Reverent hazel eyes look to my soft brown.

"You stop poking fun at you brother's table manners."

Sam nods, biting his lip as he struggles not to laugh as I place his pie before him.

"And you, Dean..."

Huge green eyes, happy with the simple pleasure of kitchen table banter, hold, enfold and embrace mine.

"Don't mess with Sam's laundry. Okay?"

"Yeah, Sis."

Dean smiles as he takes his extra large plate of pie.

And a contented silence, bar from the harmonious sounds of chewing, fills the Bunker.

The Bunker.

My new home that I am coming to love very, very seriously.

Ends


	3. A Moment with My Brother - Prom Night

**A Moment with My Brother **

**Prom Night **

I guess that I don't have to tell you that it takes a lot to silence me. I'm just naturally gabb-ery. I imagine the doula who birthed me onto the baked red earth under the scorching African sky...okay, alright...midwife-delivery room-middle-America. Hey a girl can fantasize can't she? Well, anyway she probably slapped me not to prompt my precious first cry but to seek for a moments silence amid the infantile blather.

Oh and due to past experience, I now always pack ear-plugs so if ya have to ever share a room with me you'll be able to drown out the murmur of inane drivel (thus described by maybe more than one of my past conquests. Really not flattering. Hummff!) that burbles from my plumptious lips even when I slumber.

So for me to be rendered mute is uncommon. No, scrub that. Unheard of. Yeah, that's more accurate.

Yet here I stand.

Mute.

Muffled.

Dampened.

Silent apart from the little hitches of breath that accompany the sappy smile that adorns my lips and the suspicious sparkle of moisture (pfhew...praise the Lord for waterproof mascara or you'd have to call me Rocky the raccoon!) in my eyes.

And amidst all this silence, I'm bundled, with cherished haste, toward my Bunker bed-room, the groceries I've just run for stolen from my grasp as he smiles in Winchester triumph at my utter, total and possible mildly-hypoxic surprise.

"You have 15 minutes."

He says simply as he pushes me with gently authority into my room.

"I think I thought of everything you need. Get ready."

My eyes widen to freak-ilated flying-saucers as I take in the 'everything' laid out on the memory-foam conspirator and he laughs, his hand on my back propelling me inward and closing the door with a gleeful.

"Don't come out till I knock."

snSNsn

It's 14 minutes and 37 seconds later. (What? OCD-babes crave accuracy!) and I'm nervous but then I'm meant to be, aren't I? It's a glorious part of the tradition so I look in the mirror again and revel in the gut-churning excitement of the feeling.

14 minutes and 42 seconds and I'm back to the moment, weeks ago now, that I have realized prompted all this.

We were, it's fair to say...well...shit-faced (;0)) at the time so I'm kinda amazed he even logged it...but them I'm not, cause actually, if you analyze him, he does that all the time. It's instinctive to him. Hardwired by genetics and life's hard lessons and his infinite capacity to care for those he loves.

Thus, for him, it's just normal that he selects/remembers/extrapolates the little inconsequential things we say that even though we don't recognize it, have humungeous/catastrophic/mind-blowing importance for us.

Cause that's what he's like.

His shiny, tough, brittle, M&M candy-coat exterior is exactly what Mars and Murrie designed it to be.

A shell.

Amour to protect the wonderful soft, sweet delight that it hides.

Note to self...delight might be part of a set of descriptors to sneak up on him slowly. Possibly not PC to call a bad-ass big-bro hunter soft or sweet. Even though he is.

So, like I said, my tequila slammer and cherry daiquiri haze-inspired confession of three weeks ago has become this.

He has taken my 'nah...I-don't-care-I-never-got-asked-to-prom, prom's-for-loosers, only-skittish-phweebs-go to prom' and seen straight through it.

Seen right through my tough, red-headed, rule-breaking, cyber-gaming chick-i-ness to the sad, hurt, rejected kid that wanted more badly than she could ever admit to fit in, just for that one, glitter and crepe-paper adorned night.

snSNsn

Fourteen minute and 57 seconds and I take a huge breath in and push to the back of my mind the chaotic mess, (down, down damned OCD gremlins), I have created and open my Bunker bed-room door to the prom date I never ever thought I'd have.

And damn, if he don't good enough to eat, all scrubbed up and, 'oh-my-god-that-tux-is-to-die-for'd. Almost makes me wish I fancied boys.

And then he smiles at me as I step into the corridor and his wildly decadent, green, green eyes wrap me in the magic of the moment my big brother has created for me.

"You look beautiful, Charlie."

He says with such reverence that I want to cry and pulls a little box from behind his back and I 'Oooo' like a good prom date should at the little corsage he's proffering.

Pink rose buds and white baby's breath slip onto my wrist and I smile because I doubt he would know that their message is grace and purity of heart but as I wonder at their beauty I am taken by how apt their unspoken, language of flowers, message is. Cause his actions are redolent of his grace and the purity of his overwhelmingly large heart.

They match the elegant yet simple gown that was laid out on the bed for me and the flash of pink that is the handkerchief that peeks from the top pocket of his tuxedo.

I can hear music playing in the Bunker's library and he takes my arm and we sashay along the sleek marble in a meaningful attempt at 3/4 time.

He's strung little white Christmas lights and the room is empty of the usual table and chairs and Sam's plethora of research parafinalia and it's way better than any crepe-paper decorated high-school gymnasium has ever been and I can't get my lips to stop smiling even though my cheeks ache with happiness.

"Miss Bradbury..."

Dean has turned to face me and from somewhere 'Moon River' is playing softly and I thump my fist into his shoulder cause he gave me Hell for making him watch 'Breakfast at Tiffanys' last movie night. Damn, if I didn't know that he loved it really though.

"You didn't get to dance at your prom so...I thought..."

He stops then and shrugs, his face a little hesitant almost as if he thinks I could possible...possible not be abso-fucking-lutely blown away by what he's done for me and that right there, that gentle, sweet touch of shy vulnerability is just way too adorable.

I can't speak cause the tears have come. Tears of that particular type of happiness that come when you are wrapped in someone's else's unconditional love for you, so I press into his arms, reveling in the safety and wonder I have found in this man.

This special man. My brother, my Dean.

Ends


	4. Chapter 2 - Mega-Death 3000

**A Moment with My Brother**

**Mega-Death 3000 **

Ah good.

They, my boys, are all assembled in the library as I'd hoped and I can at last address the matter that has become of dire, total and absolute import in my otherwise pretty damn fine Bunker existence.

I stride confidently to the head of the table and woohoo, my sci-fi/space-pirate/cyber-chick costume has had the desired effect and their attention is silently and solidly on me.

It's the eye-patch I think...or maybe the fact that the purple pants are more or less sprayed on that never fails to charm either the chappies or the chickies for that matter.

So, we stare at each other for at least ten seconds. I find ten seconds is a good length of time for confused awe to develop into burgeoning adoration. Nine seconds doesn't really cut it, whereas eleven tips the very nervous into unattractive dithering.

So as I said, they, Dean, Sam, Cas and Kevin, are all intent on me and exchanging looks that are so sufficiently bemused as to tell me I have every chance of landing my message in their manly, testosterone-clogged, frontal lobes. (Brain-lobes, I mean. Get your mind out of the gutter!)

I draw my Mega-Death 3000 and casually lock and load one of the pretty pink foam bullets.

The boys exchange looks.

Cas is stoically confused. His head cutely tilted like a ruffle-coated pug puppy who heard the word walkies.

Sam is meaningfully concerned, as is Sam's way but intent on steadying Kevin who, in turn, is notching up his GAD score to seven (Oh crap, now **you** look confused. Have I lost ya? GAD...you know...General Anxiety Disorder score of 7...moderate anxiety.)

And Dean?

Dean looks playfully amused, his full (he could model for JuveDerm with that mouth) lips upturned into a smile that is all cocky challenge.

I focus on Kevin. It's not really fair of me to be honest as he's the easy hit in terms of my capacity to induce terror, but I don't have all night for this as there's a re-run of Fargo (gotta be in my all time top 10 movies) on in a hour and I need to cajole Dean to make us fresh popcorn again if I am to gain maximal enjoyment from the wood-chipper scene.

"Pick a body part, Tran."

My face is implacable and his dark, bambi-soft eyes skitter nervously round his boyish brethren.

Cas racks up the puggle-tilt and I worry he'll screw his gimbal lock for good but I don't weaken even in the face of Sam's disapproving flicks his Pantene-sleek bangs.

And Dean?

Dean snorts derisively so I call...'left solar plexus!' and let him have it.

A pretty-pink, Mega-Death 3000 to the gut sees his cocky bravado turned to wounded, winded, bent-over-doubled moaning and now I am sure I have their attention.

I repeat my request.

"Body part, Tran..."

But he's escalated to double figures now. GAD of maybe fifteen plus - severe anxiety, and he couldn't verbalize to save his soul.

So I swing the muzzle of the bright, lime-green and orange terror inducer toward our erstwhile angel.

"Clavicle!"

And I ping him good and hard in the shoulder.

"'Patella!"

And Sam curls meaningfully over his throbbing knee.

I halt then and blow away the imaginary wisp of smoke from the Mega-Death's barrel as four pairs of watering (and I never even plugged Kevin) eyes remain rooted on my Swarovski encrusted eye-patch.

"So boys..."

I place the bebe-gun on the table and sweep from the other holster my Classic Custom 45.

"Does anyone doubt my ability to hit whatever I chose to aim at?"

They're quiet and still and so I slowly polish the side of the slide to it's pristinely perfect mirror-shine on my skin-tight spandex and that seems to convince them, if they weren't already.

"No..nope...no..."

They mumble softly and I smile, rewarding them for being good, obedient boys.

"Groovy. So then..."

I look them, one at a time, directly in the eye.

"You'll understand, that if I have to tell you once more, that if any one of you goes in my bathroom again and leaves the seat up on my toilet when they pee..."

I pause and allow then to squirm under my intense, dominating scrutiny.

"I will not hesitate to shoot him in a place that means he will need to sit down to pee in future."

You can hear the collective rustle of their male reproductive gear 'retracting for take off' and I smile a smile of pure feminine superiority.

"Are we clear?"

Cas nods just once, his ice-blues swearing allegiance to my cause.

Sam shift uncomfortably, his ernest face awash with possible guilt and nods similarly.

Kevin hiccups a GAD level 19 affirmation and shifts unconsciously closer to the larger Winchester for protection.

And Dean?

Dean rubs meaningfully at his bruised belly, little flashes of tight abs peeking from beneath his shirt as his hand pats and swirls. He's frowning and I'm suddenly worry I've not done enough to command his fealty.

I shift the 45 to both hands, a la Charlie's Angels and tilt my eye patch up and his frown turns to his famous, 'charm-the-birds-from-the-trees' smile as he tips me a first-finger-to-quirked-eye-brow salute as he drawls.

"Yes Ma'am. Ten-four that!"

Ends


	5. Chapter 5 - Can I Have a Bite?

**A Moment with My Brother**

**Can I have a bite?**

Dean is eating a muffin.

Blueberry I think and it looks real good. He baked them earlier and we, Sam, Cas, Kevin and I have all had more than one already. Dean hasn't though. He was too busy seeing that we enjoyed them.

I have had two, only two...Sam managed four. The blueberry was sweet and sharp and the chocolate, rich and silky on the palate.

Really I'm full but somehow Dean's muffin...that particular muffin, looks super delicious.

He's lounging, sprawled across the opposite end of the big sofa to me, his legs intertwined with mine as we symbiotically utilize the space available for maximum comfort. His feet are bare and he's tapping his toes against my shin as we co-habit harmoniously.

He's making tiny, unconscious nom-nom-nom noises as he breaks off little pieces of the big cakey delight from where it resides on the plate that he has balanced on his chest and dropping them into his mouth. His face is contentedly happy and I note that the front of his t-shirt is still floury from baking.

"Can I have a bit?"

I say as I smile my best, 'I'm-a-good-girl smile and he pauses in mid chew, looking intently at me.

"I asked you if you wanted one bringing before I sat down. You said you were full."

He reminds me patiently and goes on chewing but doesn't go to share and so I sit up from my graceful (it is too, graceful! I'm always graceful.) sprawl, my grin ramping up from alluringly girlish to totally disarming.

"I know, I didn't want one then..."

"So then..."

He smiles back at me, ignoring my request as if 'So then...' makes his devilish selfishness okay.

"So then...gimme a bit."

I hold my hand toward him but he just smiles and drops another piece into his own mouth.

"Magic word?"

He mumbles between chews and his face is a picture of brotherly tease and torment.

"Please..."

I crawl along the sofa, kneeling all over him as he makes a grab for his plate and snatches up the last big bite into his fingers.

Pllleease!"

I pout sweetly and copy the patented Sam-puppy-dog-eyes.

And Dean, my abused, hen-pecked, totally-rad, badass brother sighs and stretches his hand toward me relinquishing his precious last bite and I chew and nom-nom-nom appreciatively as he wistfully licks the last few crumbs from his fingers.

Ends


	6. Chapter 6 - Sam's mad

**A Moment with My Brother**

**Sam's Mad.**

Sam's mad.

No...no, that's not right. Strike that thought before it turns all over-bright screen-saver-ish and burns into your giant-brain-y-cortex. He's not mad, he just looks like he is.

Oh don't get me wrong, it's a darn fine impression of being mad and he's very commanding, being tall as all fuck, so even quasi/not-really/but-Sammy-sorta, mad is pretty intimidating.

No, it is. Really it is. It's intimidated Kevin clear outta the library with it's flaring nostrils and flowing locks and dramatic, stomping about.

But for all that, you and I know (cause I just told ya, so even if you weren't bright enough to work it out for yaself, you know it now) he's not actually mad.

It's a good enough attempt at it though that Cas isn't really sure...but then Cas's often unsure.

Well, about some things he is.

Human things especially. It's endearing as stink but does sometimes lead to angelic awkwardness. He's funniest with Dean. Man, I could write a book...series of novels...epic GoT saga about how misunderstood those two manage to get themselves.

But that's for another time.

Just now I'm explaining about Sam being mad, (Not actually.)

So here's the deal. I'll be short cause I know you don't have all day...groceries to be shopped/ ironing to be done/ things to be salted and burned.

So, movin' on, lickerty-split...

Dean's hurt.

It's not shit-med-evac-to-the-emergency-room-stat!, hurt but it's certainly 'Get-off-me-I-can-walk-Oops-let-me-carry-ya-twenty -stitches-and four-bandages' sorta hurt and all the anxiety and painful empathy and guilt cause I wasn't there to watch your back, that comes with that, for Sam.

And, to be honest, Dean's been pretty grown up about it...well, for Dean, he's been grown up...and for the most part has bitten down his embarrassment at needing even a modicum of help and acquiesced to our combined fussing over him.

So we got him cleaned up and sutured and bandaged and it was all going really well until Sam tried to get him into his PJ's and 'put him to bed'. Yeah, literally, hands-on, put Dean to bed.

And see, Dean didn't want to go. Not unless he was going under his own steam and by that stage he was tired and sore but didn't want to admit that he couldn't get there under his own steam.

You're getting the picture, huh?

And so then they...had words...big, shouty, I don't love you at all and I never have, words and it all went...pear...nope, it went whole-fruit-freaking-cocktail, shaped.

So now Sam's banging and muttering round the kitchen, slamming the cupboard doors and declaring how irrational, unreasonable and down-right annoying his big brother is.

Un-huh...

Time for a sibling intervention I feel.

I meander to the counter and plop myself down on one of the breakfast bar stools. I don't say anything. I just follow Sam with my eyes and exude waves of sisterly solace.

It takes nineteen seconds (not my best but pretty close) and Sam quietens, stills and sighs.

"How you doing, Sam?"

I ask softly, lacing each word with the love I absolutely feel for this, so-young but old for his years, giant of a man.

All the fight goes out of him instantly...I've not lost my magic, and he parks his impressive frame opposite me and smiles, sorta sheepishly.

"I'm sorry..."

He apologizes and I pat his hand where it lies on the counter top but leave the silence for him to fill. And he does.

"It's just..."

He sighs again and tilts his head toward Dean's room.

"He makes me so mad sometimes, Charlie."

I nod my 'feel free to get it all out' nod and back it up with my lake-of-empathy eyes. He knows I know the truth so he 'fesses up' and carries on.

"I just wanna help him sometimes like he helps me. He's always there for me. For Cas, for you...For anyone who needs it..."

I smile warmly cause he's right. Dean gives of himself all the time. I worry one day he'll have given so much there'll be nothing left for himself and I know that thought terrorizes Sam too.

"But he won't...just damn well let me be there for him."

His voice has softened and his hazel eyes are gentle with frustrated affection and I'm drawn to take his hand in mine.

"Won't?"

I question back and he looks momentarily puzzled before a wry, soft, sad smile lifts the corner of his mouth.

"Can't..."

He whispers and I nod...we both nod cause we know the truth of it. It's not that Dean won't...he **can't** let people help him. It's not willful defiance that stops him but a lifetime of genetic programming that tells every fibre of his being that he doesn't matter but others do.

Especially Sam. To Dean, no one really matters as much as Sam. And Sam knows that.

He glances over towards his brother's room again and now his deep hazel eyes are warm as a summers day. Alive with his love for the man who, more or less raised him.

"I left him struggling to try and put his t-shirt on. He just would not let me help him."

I tilt my head, sympathetic to the remorse that oozes from him.

"He can't even lift his arm but the stubborn bastard was all 'I can manage, Sammy' and I got mad and told him he was an annoying shit and he could damn well struggle then."

I laugh a little then. I don't mean to be cruel but I can't help it cause I can see both of their stubborn, mad at each other cause they were both scared, faces and I want to shake them, shake some sense into them but I'd be bucking against...well against what their whole life has taught them. So I forget that as a plan.

Sam goes to rise as if to head towards Dean's room.

"I should go..."

He starts but I stop him with a meaningful shake of my head...it tousles my shiny red locks to maximum effect and suggest instead.

"Let me go, Sam."

He holds my gaze for what seems like minutes and I find an amount of trust reflected back to me that is humbling.

"Okay."

He smiles out that one word that means so much more and I stand to head for Dean's room only to be seized in a hug that's so warm that I feel tears prickle in my eyes and I hug him back, happy that my little, 'big-brother' is in my life.

Ends


	7. Chapter 7 - Mostly Dead

**A Moment with My Brother**

**Mostly Dead.**

Dean's door is slightly ajar and so I don't knock but just gently push so that it softly squeaks itself open and I can see him.

He's sitting on the bed. I guess in pretty much the position that Sam left him when he had his hissy fit and stomped out and I can tell straight away that he's hurting.

He's holding his body stiff and has one arm...the one not mummied-up to the eyeballs in bandages, pressed firmly onto the bed as if, were he to loosen the grip, he'd just wobble inelegantly to the floor.

He hasn't managed to get his t-shirt on so he's in just his rattiest old sweat-pants and nothing else and though he's trying to hide it, he's shivering with cold...and maybe, pain.

I cross swiftly to him, grabbing up the comforter from the bottom of the bed as I pass.

"Hey."

I say as I sit myself down on the chair so that I'm knee to knee with him, (well almost...gee, his legs are a bit bowed!) and look into his remorseful green eyes.

"Hey yourself."

He's quiet. It's a pull-at-your-heart-strings, I-might-have-fucked-up and I-feel-like-crap, sorta quiet and he quickly breaks the gaze and stares down at the hole in the thigh of his pants, shivering.

I shuck the blanket and stand, making it obvious that I'm gonna put it round his shoulders, so that I don't de-stabilize him in doing so, cause I was right (call me Nurse Ratchet...no, wait. She was a prize biatch! I know...I'll be Nurse Houlihan...Mmm, 'Hot Lips'!), he's wobbly as hell.

Once tucked in the blankie...(I had a blankie when I was little. I used to call it ducky-cover) he looks a little bit less immediately vulnerable so I sit back down and wait to see if he wants to talk.

He doesn't. Not really. Cause let's be honest, it's one of the hardest things you can ask Dean to do. But he does all the same.

"Is he..."

Pause.

He picks at the edge of the blanket with his good hand.

I wait.

"Is Sam..."

His head comes up and his eyes are flying-saucer wide.

"Is he mad at me still?"

I wanna hug him but I feel like I should sort this out first cause I'm his adoring baby-sis, both of them's baby-sister, and let's face it, they're boys and therefore genetically too disadvantaged to sort this out properly for themselves.

I edge a little closer and I can see he's working at focussing on me but I suspect I'm in sorta old 1930's movie-star soft-focus right now.

"He is..."

I say hesitantly and he blinks and de-ages, before my eyes, a few years more into his fluffy blue blankie.

"But it's because he's worried about ya."

I add softly.

"But I'm..."

He tries to get the 'I'm okay" universal Winchester/ catch-all/ in any circumstance baring actual total demise, phrase out of his slightly-too-pale lips but I silence him with a sweep of my sultry brown eyes and he knows better than to challenge me.

"Don't say it. You both need a new obvious untruth to trot out like a stupid platitude in every circumstance known to man so I'm gonna give you..."

I hesitate, thinking for a moment and all credit to him, he stays in submissive silence as I cogitate.

"Mostly dead!"

Yeah that's much better. I laugh happily at my inventiveness...well, okay. Yeah, I know technically it's a pull from possibly the finest movie of all time...well, that and Fargo...Ooo and Donovan's Reef...and...Schindler's List...Sorry. I got lost in celluloid nirvana for a moment there.

Where were we?

Oh yeah...Mostly dead.

Well no, we weren't actually mostly dead...Oh you know what I mean. Don't be pedantic. It doesn't suit ya!

Anyway, he's looking at me. He looks exhausted and pale and guilt-laden and suddenly I feel like my erstwhile and quite inappropriately acquired nursing qualification should be stripped unceremoniously from my theatre greens for making him feel so crappy.

"I didn't mean for him to get mad, Charlie."

His voice is cut to a virtual whisper and he looks so young and sad and sore so I make sure my face tells him that I absolutely understand that he didn't mean to.

"I know but he still is...because he worries about you as much as you worry about him."

I pause for this shiny pearl of sparkly wisdom to penetrate his endearing thick skull and I see it has cause his lower lip pouts just a bit.

"So?"

I say and he's concentrating on me which is good but swaying a tiny bit too and I know I'm gonna need to get him into bed soon.

"So that means... occasionally?"

I prompt but he's too tired a little fishy to jump on my hook so I stand and lift the covers indicating he should get under them. The shirt can wait, blue-blankie will do to wrap him up warm for tonight. He looks more comfy now but he still hasn't answered my too taxing question so I relent and do it for him.

"Sooo...that means occasionally you have to let him help you. Get it?"

He's laying back now, looking fuzzy and mostly out of it so I fuss a little with the pillows making sure his hurt shoulder and arm are supported.

He nods. His eyes are drooping and I note the two tablets and half glass of water on the side table. He refused to take his pain meds too, I guess. No wonder Sam freaked.

"I get it, Charlie."

His voice is almost lost to total lassitude...both warm woolly blanket and exhaustion inspired and I pick up the pills and water.

"Here take these and then you can go to sleep."

He fumbles with the meds but swallows them and then leans to put the glass back down. His hand is clumsy though and the remaining inch of tepid water slooshes onto the surface of his nightstand as he inadvertently tips the glass and suddenly he's moving far faster than I thought he could in the state he is, and calling urgently...really, very urgently...

"Charlie! My photo..."

There's only one photo on the nightstand. It's an old, curled at the edge, worn out smudge of a thing but I snatch it to safety, trying to sooth him as the rapid movement he made has fired to life all his Ramses-wrapped hurts and his slightly pale has become white as buttermilk.

"It's fine...calm down, be still, you're gonna hurt yourself...It's safe. Your photo's safe."

I raise my eyebrow at myself for daring to utter the newly banished 'it's fine' and hurriedly wipe the edge of the photo so the splashes of water don't bleed or tarnish the image there and place it into his outstretched, trembling hand.

"It's not damaged...see, it's alright."

I smile my top level reassuring smile at him and I carefully nestle him back into his woolen cocoon and he hiccups and trembles in pain, clutching the photo against him like it is his last and only lifeline.

And I realize as I lean over and kiss him on the forehead and his eyes close as he falls to sleep that perhaps that's exactly what it is.

Ends


	8. Chapter 8 - Garbage Mashers

It would be worth reading chapters 6 & 7 before you read this one as they are continuations of this little moment. Many thanks to everyone reading and especially to those commenting. Your kind words are much appreciated.

**A Moment with My Brother.**

**Garbage Mashers**

It's taken a few days for Dean to really well be well enough to get up and around again but in that time, surprisingly he's accepted our combined bunker-squad ministrations with nary a squeak of protest and even, on occasion asked when he's needed help.

Neither has Dean made a big deal of their fall out, and too his credit, Sam hasn't either and I have to admit to getting a little bit girly, maybe even teary, from time to time when Dean's leaned on Sam as he's helped him to the bathroom or made an effort to 'eat up all his din-dins!' as required.

Now he's a bit better, well enough to be out of bed for more than a few minutes, we've ensconced him on the big leather sofa in the bunker's lounge and are taking turns to ensure that he's never more than a toss of the TV remote from one or other of us.

We're currently on the third re-run of Star Wars..."Shut down all the garbage mashers on the detention level, will ya?" - you know the scene! and the boys, Sam, Dean and Cas are all focused on an argument about how they would have done a better job of bracing the walls so I absented myself quietly (Yes, I can too be quiet when I need to!) to complete the secret mission I had set for myself.

It only takes me a couple of minutes.

I slip, Ninja-like, into Dean's room and lift it, my secret weapon, from the innocuous grocery bag I've been carefully hiding it in, do the necessary business and place it back, reverently on the nightstand.

I check it's just so...just as Dean likes it placed...I think so he can see it when he lays in bed just before he goes to sleep. Yeah, I've got it right and I leave, hopeful/ nervous/ anxious that I've done the right thing.

Cause I want it, real bad, to be right for him.

snSNsn

We all head to bed pretty late, Sam hovering behind Dean and Dean allowing him too without growling at all about his personal space.

I wash the coffee mugs and plates we've used and potter a bit before, turning off the lights as I pad across the smooth, cool marble toward my own little bunker sleep-haven.

I pass Dean's door en route so I'm deliberately quiet as I move in case Sam's already got him settled and off to another bout of much-needed sleep but, as it happens, he's still awake.

In fact as I glance solicitously into his room he's sitting on the side of the bed with my 'secret mission' in his hands.

I don't make a noise cause he's lost in looking at the vision of his mom that is the precious picture he was so terrified might be damaged or destroyed when he spilt the water those few nights ago.

I've smoothed it and placed it carefully into the prettiest frame I could find in that little artsy-crafty shop in town and I think it looks nice...real nice and if nothing else it'll be protected from accidental spills and bumps and random knocks from now on.

Cause see, it's valuable...no, more than that, it's invaluable cause for Dean it's one of the few tangible images he has of her. Oh there are many locked in his heart but they are harder to share with Sam cause it's near impossible for him to let Sam see how terribly, awfully, wonderfully much he misses her.

Sam does too, miss her I mean. I know he does, but Sam was only a baby when what happened, happened and so the warm, real, sweet, tender, loving creature that his mom was is perhaps more of a theoretical concept than an actual memory for Sam.

I turn carefully so as not to let Dean know I was here and go to my room. He doesn't need to know that I saw his tears, or saw him draw the rough pad of his thumb across the faded image or watched him raise the little white frame to his lips and kiss her goodnight as I am sure she always kissed him.

snSNsn

Sam was first up this fine bunker morning and so it's granola and yogurt with fresh fruit for breakfast and he and I and Kevin are laughing about Cas's inability to open a yogurt pot without squirting the strawberry (strawberry is the post-angelic flavour of the month) delight all down his shirt front. He must have been shown a dozen times now but he can't get the habit of slowly pulling the little foil lid, he always goes for an over-assertive tug resulting in crime-scene splatter on his duds.

Dean enters some thirty minutes after everyone else and he's tousled and bed-headed but looks less pale than he has since he got banged up.

"Morning, Sunshine."

Cas deadpans, stealing Dean's oft chanted and early morning irritating line and we all laugh, Dean included, at him cause he's no idea how freaking funny such a Dean-ism sounds coming outta his mouth.

Dean walks over to the table, scratching idly at his bandaged arm. The real hurt of it has now given way to 'don't scratch, it must be getting better' itchiness and he fusses at it as he eyes the healthy breakfast repast suspiciously.

"No bacon?"

He mumbles, dropping his hand away from his bandages as Cas swats at him meaningfully.

"Don't scratch at it."

The ex-angel says as he pushes out the chair beside him so Dean can sit and the hunter rolls his big green eyes and makes for the chair.

We go back to eating and so they rest of them don't, I think, notice as in passing me by, Dean bends, only a little stiffly, and swiftly but softly kisses the top of my head.

Even if they do see the others say nothing and the gentle 'thank you, Charlie' he whispers is audible only to me.

It's fleeting, that touch, but it burns into my consciousness with such power and when he takes his seat, next to Cas and across from me and raises his tender gaze to meet mine I know that I am glad I have eased my brother's generous heart.

Ends


	9. Chapter 9 - Chopping

**Here is the longer version of my E/O drabble challenge for this week. **

** s/9419581/1/EO-drabble-challenge-Slab**

**The challenge word was Slab. **

**A Moment with My Brother**

**Chopping**

Dean is chopping vegetables.

The knife moves like it's a gleaming, metallic extension of his body, like the brushed aluminum of the blade and his flesh are symbiotically but happily co-dependent (Umm, but then he know's something about co-dependency, doesn't he? So maybe it's not really that surprising).

He's humming contentedly as he exquisitely deconstructs the trembling viand that lay like supplicants at the marble altar that is his chopping board. The near professional speed with which he works is mesmerizing and I find it impossible not to smile as I realize that he is sacrificing the celery in-time to the beat of his internal metronome.

Chop-chop-chop, the blade flies fluidly matching the heavy-rock 4/4 beat, the uber-sharp tip near-kissing the skin of his fingers as he advances the aromatics to their necessary demise.

The honey-honed blade tings percussively on the cold, slick stone with each powerful thrust and my eyes are drawn to the pretty pink and grey swirls of the marble slab that is Dean's custom cuttery.

The wedge of granite is unusual, it's sides nowhere near linear and I find the wainy-edges, though eclectic and individual as I pride myself on being, at odds with my obsessive Charlie-pulsiveness.

I realize that I haven't seen the chopping-board before and as he sweeps the last of the mirepoix into the softly sizzling saute pan on the hob, I rise and move closer to truth-see for it's origin.

The stone is heavy as I heft it and I know from the weight that it could find a happy home in some designer chef-y boutique but I doubt, despite the empowering emergence of his latent but serious skills, that I would ever find Dean in such a place. Well not unless he were there to exorcise the cilantro...Ugg, cilantro...work of the devil!

So, that leaves me thinking, where did he/we/the bat-cave crew acquire such a killer piece of kitchen-kit?

He smiles at me as I examine the goods. It's a playful tease of a smile that sings a playground song of 'I know something you don't know' and I flare my nostrils for him, allowing him a precious moment of sibling-superiority as we all know he'll rarely achieve another, simply because of his unfortunate xx chromasome-y. (Come now...I just mean he's a boy and boys suck compared to girls!)

I turn the board in my hands and though the top surface is smooth as a...peach? (Can't apply that descriptor to rock can you? Need another example for ya...Smooth as a..? Humm..? Oh the hell with it. Smooth as a really smooth thing. Okay?), the other side is, I am surprised to see, sculpted.

Letters are deeply embossed into the raspberry-ripple marble...the first row, due to the nature of where the rough crack that has delineated it's shaggy edge, holds just capital I.

The second row sees a capital L, followed by a lowercase o and v and the final row, (there were, I think, more but here another rift in the parent stone has abridged the verse), has a large M followed by a baby e and m.

So here take a look at it with me...

In

Lov

Mem

Shit!

Do you see what I see?

Are you putting two and two together and seeing revered memoriam turned to Winchester workstation?

I turn my 'I'm-mock-shocked-beyond-belief' face to my smirking brother as he attempts to innocently stir the sweet-smelling pot.

"In Loving Memory?"

My voice is all disapproving accusation and he has the grace to look a wee bit sheepish as he nods guiltily.

"really? I don't believe it...You stole an actual gravestone to be our chopping board?"

Dean squinshes his face up, raising his hands and so, wooden spoon, in his defense.

"Well...Not exactly stole...It was just lying there...and the graveyard had been abandoned for years..."

I tut and he diddles his leg a bit like a scolded child as he continues.

"And anyway...it's not a whole gravestone..."

He pouts a little as my big, brown eyes scold his blushing freckles.

"Oh well that's okay then!"

I chide and he rolls his big green eyes as I continue.

"And anyway...Ewwh, Bro!...gravestone...churchyard...decomposing bodies. And hello! Maybe evil spirits or religious backlash as well."

I gesture with girly trepidation at the dismembered memorial tablet where it sits on the counter but he shakes his head, his gaze defiant...proud that he has thought this through and can foreswear all my objections.

"No, Charlie, it's cool. Really I thought of all that and believe me this baby has been KrudKutter-d, Holy watered and exorcised to within an inch of it's life. Every single, slimy sucker, be it corporeal or ephemeral that ever lurked there has been nuked outa existence.

I eye him suspiciously, but my face must give him a clue that I'm impressed.

"And it's really eco-friendly...ya know...re-cycling!"

He grins disarmingly and I sweat him for just a few seconds before grinning with him.

"Sam'll be proud."

I praise him and Dean smiles wider.

"See he's not the only eco-warrior in the family."

He laughs as he goes back to his cooking and I'm left to glance at the back of him as I think warrior, yes definitely but eco I not convinced.

ends

**Many thanks to all those reading and especially to those commenting. Your views and comments are lovely.**


	10. Chapter 10 - Fire-Drake

This chapter is an extended version of drabble I wrote for the weekly E/O drabble challenge on . Some slight Game of Thrones season three spoilers.

Oh and Charlie and the boys are on a little foray beyond the bunker this time.

Hope you enjoy and thanks for reading and commenting. It's a pleasure to hear from you all

**A Moment with My Brother **

Chapter 10 - Fire-Drake

"Well holy hell on a medieval handcart...who'd have credited they're actually real?"

Dean gasps and I watch as he flaps his hand in spectacular and amazed disbelief toward the mouth of the cave, some scant metres from our hastily adopted and very precarious refuge, indicating with undisguised joy, the three foot tall bundle of incendiary delight, snorting and belching fire irritably as it attempts to gently flambe us all.

"I know I've seen more than my fair share of otherworldly crap so perhaps I should have believed but I always just thought they were...you know... Moon-Door-ish-Tolkein-isms!"

I tut indulgently and fix him with a sooty (dark, sultry, supermodel-101) look of mock-disapproval and he has the grace to blush and squirm just a little.

"Yeah, well whatever, but all the same, Dean..."

Ah ha...Sam is less thrilled with our Darwinian discovery. You can tell from the piss and vinegar tone to his slightly hoarse (it's the smoke) voice and the way he's batting gingerly at the smoldering ruin that is the leg of his second-best jeans.

"It might have helped if you hadn't called him 'Sparky' and asked for your burger done extra crispy..."

He growls over the whooshing flame-throw-ery noise the feisty little beast is making, his long-suffering hazel eyes enhanced beautifully with flashes of crimson flame.

But Dean is oblivious to his brother's snark, he's just girlishly giddy at our funky supernatural discovery.

"An actual...honest-to-god...freaking...firedrake..."

Dean giggles, laughter lighting up his impossibly green eyes as he unconsciously blows on his singed fingers, fruitlessly trying to cool the burn that, no doubt, throbs there as we all hunker defensively against the rear wall of the cave.

"Yup, pretty damn amazing, huh..."

I agree, smiling at the adorably childish wonder in his voice as I twist my body round, avoiding 'Sparky's' continued nuggets of hawked-up napalm and shuffle closer to get a better look at his burnt hand.

And thus it's as I pass by my younger, and considerably less-enthused sibling, I hear Sam mutter something that sounds like...

"...Tolkein Twaddle..."

OMG...He wouldn't dare, would he?

I stare him down (and it's surprisingly easier than I thought. He looks tough but give him a full on girl-face and he's soon put in his place.)

"Really, Sam?"

I ramp it up to the full 'Oh-you-are-in-deep-doodoo' look, both barrels, head on and he crumbles and even I'm a bit amazed to see how meekly he can press that huge great slab of a man that he is, into the protective rock face in the face of my feminine ire.

Way to go Charlie B, he might be twice as wide and a good deal taller than ya but he recognizes when he should be afraid and if he is gonna have the audacity to diss such a deity of the fantasy-nerd kingdom...then he should be plenty afraid.

"I should wash your 'righter-of-supernatural-wrongs' mouth out with soap and water for daring to utter such blasphemy."

I frown in full LARP-er royalty outrage at my hand-maiden-number-two's 'Hobbit-y'-heresy, thumping him on the shoulder (the one that's not looking like an over-toasted crumpet) and he gives me his best wide-eyed innocent look...you know the one that has IRS agents weeping with shame, as he gabbles to make amends.

"Sorry, your Highness."

I smile with munificent regality as Dean chimes in again.

"And you know the best bit?"

We shake our collective heads and even Sam has to smile at Dean's obvious pleasure.

"It's only an adolescent, imagine what it'll be able to do when it's fully grown."

"How on earth can you possibly know that?"

Sam muses, irritation at the loss of his pant leg to the fiery little sucker bleeding some of his attention.

Dean leans out slightly from the cover of the granite to look around me and at his flummoxed brother, a look of 'dumb-ass-everyone-knows-this-shit' on his wide-eyed face.

"Daenerys Targaryen, Sammy."

Nothing from Sam though I smile dreamily to match Dean's. She's a perfect, golden-haired, 'Mother of Dragons', 'Commander of the Unsullied' and I'm happy to share our total girl-crushing on her with my big bro.

Dean rolls his eyes at his college-boy sibling's lack of 'Game of Thrones' smarts but graces him with an explanation.

"Daenerys Stormborn, blood of my blood has three dragons, Sammy and if ya'd paid attention to our season three marathon you would have noted that when they were ickle dragon-pups they scales were golden-orangey...like young 'Sparky' here."

We all turn simultaneously toward the hissing, seething, pressure-cooker of a fire-drake that is clawing at the cave opening, determined to come join us to complete our char-broiling.

The precocious winged-serpent is indeed a pretty blend of light ochre, tawny bronze and vivid gold and the sheen from it's shimmering scales dazzle us as we contemplate it's wondrous countenance.

"So it won't stay orange?"

Sam's interest has been sparked now and Dean shakes his head sagely as I reach for his blistered hand.

"Nope...it'll go darker colored...Red's and browns..."

He pauses, hissing softly like a tiny version of the fire-drake as I examine his burns. The damage is worse than I thought and as I turn his hand, palm-up, he sucks in his breath again.

"Look..."

Sam whispers, catching each of our eye in turn and then jutting his chin toward the ferocious fire-dragon.

Only now he's not so ferocious.

In fact, now he's...

Sorta...

Purring!

Yeah, you heard me. The flame-puking little ball of venom has his scaly head tilted on one side like a curious little pug-puppy and he's staring intently at Dean.

"What happened?"

Dean says conspiratorially and Sam shrugs.

"Dunno, but whatever it was we need it to keep happening."

Dean's nods enthusiastically and the motion jiggles his wounded hand and he hisses softly again...

And our baby-boy, 'Sparky', hops happily on his pterodactyl-taloned toes and chirrups...yes, I did say chirrups, in return.

"Do it again, Dean."

I whisper, as 'Sparky, head-tilts frantically, his little snout clacking open and closed like he's trying to speak.

"Do...what?"

Dean questions (somewhat stupidly) as he, and we, continue the mexican stand off.

"Duh!"

He glances at me and I roll my eyes.

"Hiss..."

I command but there's no recognition in his golden-specked, green peepers.

"Hiss, Dean...Hiss, at the pretty dragon!"

And he does.

Soft and more, much more than a little embarrassed, but he man's up and hisses and the now docile fire-drake chirrups in response.

"Awh...he likes you."

I laugh and the boys look at me in disbelief so I sigh.

"It's true. Don't believe me? Try it again."

Dean glances at Sam and he shrugs then nods.

Hiss...

Chirrup, chirrup...

Hiss, hiss...

Chirrup, chirrup, purr...

"That is so cool!"

I smile as 'Sparky' hops from foot to foot and Dean, sorta smiles, but looks sheepish.

"He definitely likes ya."

I add and Sam snorts in extravagantly dismissal.

"Don't be ridiculous."

He admonishes but I check him with the patented Bradbury-raised-eyebrow.

"Well you try it then, Tolkein-blasphemer! See if our little oven-roaster bills and coos when you speak dragon-ese."

Sam prevaricates, glances at me then at Dean...and it's the elder one's turn to shrug and shake his head.

So he tries...as we both look on expectantly...coming up with a soft hissing noise much like Dean's...

And 'Sparky' shrieks and spits a flame-thrower load of magma half the length of our cosy cave-like dwelling as we dive for whatever cover we can find.

So, maybe not as much like Dean's as we need it to be then!

"Dean! For god's sake, speak to your baby!"

Sam calls urgently, uncurling only slightly from his protective ball and pointing frantically at the now, once-more, enraged serpent.

And our own personal, 'Mother of Dragons' hisses a soothing lullaby in melodic Uruloki.

snSNsn

So thankfully after a moment or two we are able to peel ourselves from the rough cave wall and cluster bravely behind our fearless dragon whisperer, who is now sitting cross-legged on the dusty floor, his, as-surprised-as-ours, eyes held tight to the adopted fire-drakes boot-button black ones.

Hiss, hiss...

Purr...chirp...whistle...purr

"What are ya saying to it?"

Sam whispers, being careful to stay in the shadow of his brother's muscular shoulder (A good place to be Sam and one Dean feels at his most comfortable with) and Dean half turns, disbelief written all over his face.

"How the fuck do I know, Sammy. I ain't Dian Fossey here. I'm totally winging (heehee, winging...Freudian, Deano.) it in case you haven't noticed."

He carries on shushing and soothing and before long 'Sparky' has settled comfortably onto the scorched earth, his head extended through the cave mouth and his responding whistles and toots sounding more and more like true love with each passing chirp.

Then Dean does a stupid, instinctive, courageous, dumb-ass thing and extends his arm (the un-crisped one) and gently scritches at the now-languorous serpent's chin.

snSNsn

And that there, my dear readers, though no one will ever believe us I know, is how we (fair Queen of MoonDoor and her outrageously lanky handmaiden) found ourselves gratefully tiptoeing, well crawling on all fours really but tiptoeing sounds more Hans Christian Anderson, out of a soot-stained cave, past a totally besotted, slightly-smoldering fire-drake and his adopted bad-ass, mommie of dragons, the one and only Dean Fire-Drake Winchester.

Ends

Author's notes

Dian Fossey was a respected American zoologist who undertook an extensive and groundbreaking study of wild gorilla groups over a period of 18 years. She was an 'animal whisperer'.


	11. Chapter 11 - Raspberry

**A Moment with My Brother **

**Raspberries.**

It's Thursday afternoon. No one is bleeding or bruised. There are no deamons, vampires (sparkly or otherwise), were-kittens or the like rapping at the door. Sam isn't coughing or collapsing and Cas is learning every day to be a little more human.

The bunker is...calm.

Dean is folding laundry and I am voyeuristically (heehee) observing him.

I'm slobbed in one of the MoL swivelly chairs, with my gigantic yet feminine feet up on the table edge and I am smiling because there is a sweetly adorable disharmony between the Martha-Stewart-i-ness of his task and his innate, inescapable bad-ass-i-tude.

He's sitting at the other end of the big library table from me and he has the laundry basket...Wait...I gotta pause there. How abso-freaking-lutely kitsch is it that Dean - genetic, career hunter Winchester has a real, honest to goodness laundry basket?

And it's not some plastic, stacking, fold-down-able crate. No, sir-ee-bob. It's an genuine old wicker thing, I suspect he found it on one of his Bunker forays. It's authentic 1930's and it still has the remnants of pink and white (so purdy!) gingham ribbons tied around the handles...Yeah, actual heart and homestead gingham!

And my crack-ish-brain-connection-synapses segue onto which brother - aka 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers', Dean is most like? Frank I think...handsome as fuck, gallant, used to overcoming the odds...his mommy and daddy called him Frankincense for god's sake and with a name like that you'd have a big stinky heap of odds to overcome!

Sorry...I'm rambling...back to the point, Charlie B.

So there's this laundry basket on the floor beside him and neatly drilled piles of clothes spread out on the table top like they are his regiments in some tiny Bunker battlefield re-enactment.

He's humming softly as he folds, the precision of the simple task soothing the ever present thrum of tension that usually exudes from him.

His body is loose and fluid, the muscles in his tanned arms defined by the shift of his snug t-shirt sleeves as he stretches and shimmies about his business and I get to thinking how strange and possibly wonderful inanity/tranquility/safety must feel for him?

"Do you want this folded or should it be hung?"

I start a little at the sound of his voice as I'd got so caught up in my deep and intellectual observations (don't you tut...for me that was bordering on philosophical) that I had kinda forgotten that he could speak so I don't answer as swiftly as he expects and his eyes come up, a hint of worry widening them, to find mine.

They are green in a way that would make Faberge weep and alive with the very essence of his soul.

"Huh?"

I counter in a telling display of articulate and witty words-man-ship and his eyebrow raises as the edges of his (far too full to be on a man) lips curl into a smile.

"Pay attention, Bradbury."

He chides, holding up the chiffony, girly blouse that could never, unlike our more unisex t-wear (I so wanna get my hands on that 'I Wuv Hugs' shirt of his) be mistaken for his, or Sam's (size = gigantor) or Cas's.

"Fold or hang?"

I stand and move down the table to stand right beside him, taking my seduction-special, vivid coral number into my hands.

"Hang, I think."

I bend and grab one of the hangers from the basket at his feet.

"Hummm...Raspberries..."

I say as I frown accusatorially at him and I stand back up leaning in toward him, my nose sniffing at his hair as I hover close.

He looks a little sheepish and moves back in his seat but I sniff him again. Yup, definitely, raspberries. His hair smells of raspberries.

I place my hangered blouse on a conveniently located picture frame and fold my hands across my chest as he begins to squirm a little under my scrutiny.

"Your hair smells like fresh luscious raspberries and is..."

I loom over him and he cringes as I run my fingers through his light brown spikes.

"...is soft, smooth and...dammit, silky as hell."

He grins.

"You used my shampoo didn't you? My special, bought from an actual shop not looted from some cheap motel and most definitely only meant to be used by girls, raspberry shampoo."

He grins some more and his head is shaking, denying his petty larceny but the fact that he smells like a freaking fruit salad kinda paints him perjury-pink.

"Did you use the conditioner too?"

His eyes widen.

"There's conditioner as well?"

He all disarming flirtatiousness and I sigh in defeat, nodding and reaching for the powder blue in the pile of dark, shabby cottons folded before him.

I shake out the shirt and hold 'I Wuv Hugs' up to my ample (Don't laugh! A girl can but dream) chest.

"Raspberry smells good on you."

I say as I flutter my eyelashes and for a moment he frowns, thinking he has the strength to withstand the might of a determined Bradbury but it's a fleeting dalliance with male supremacy (hah, yeah like that would ever really be the case) and in seconds the frown softens to a sigh.

"And blue suits you, Charlie."

He smiles, as do I, and we shake cause how's a good big brother gonna resist the whiles of a seductively sneaky sibling like me?

Ends


	12. Chapter 12 - Birthday

Thank you to everyone reading and reviewing these little moments. I am grateful for all your kind words.

**A Moment with My Brother**

**Birthday**

I sit at the head of the big library table and I am patient and mature. (No, I am. I can be if I try real hard.) In fact I would go as far as to say I am a bastion of measured grown up-ness. An icon of tranquility...The poster girl for wholly understated delight.

Well...more or less...pretty much so...aside from the girly squealing and effervescent giggles that seem to be creeping out of me on a fairly constant basis.

Why I hear you ask?

Let me tell ya...

Well, see it's my birthday...No, I will not tell ya how old I am! And the boys...my brothers...made me a party.

The cake got me first of all.

I can't really remember when I last actually had a birthday cake. Oh maybe I bought myself a solitary piece of cake in a coffee shop but this is a huge, covered in candles, frosting and chocolate curls, real, fucking, birthday cake.

And Dean made it for me.

Yup, my big bro...my savage, kill what needs to be killed as soon as it needs to be killed, badass hunter of a brother made me an honest to goodness birthday cake.

Oh and hell if it ain't good cake too. It's rich and deeply chocolatey, so satisfying...in fact I'd go as far as to say satisfying like really good sex (oh come on, don't be coy...you know what I mean. Well I hope ya do and if ya don't, get out there and remedy that asap.)

So yeah, yummy and scrummy and Dean says it's the dark chocolate that makes the difference. Only the stuff above 70% cocoa solids will do.

And I love that he knows that. Don't get me wrong...he knows a shit-load of stuff about all sorts of things (Yeah, I know Sam does too...but often Dean lets people think all the 'knowing stuff' stuff is down to Sam, even though it isn't). Sam doesn't think like that...he knows the stuff Dean knows is maybe different to what he knows but that it compliments/enhances/magnifies his bucket of stuff and that, as a whole, they know...well, pretty much most everything of what they need to know.

Am I rambling?

I'm rambling, aren't I?

No?

Good...cause see this is really important...

Dean will always defer to Sam when smarts/knowledge/book-learning is the order of the day...cause Sam's the 'college-boy' or now the 'Man of Letters'...and he's just a...what's the word he uses? Oh yeah, grunt.

But see it kinda breaks my heart when he says that. In fact I sorta hate that word because it reinforces for Dean that he is somehow...well...essentially less worthy than his brother...(Sam...my brother too now and that is wonderful) but I want him, Dean, to understand that he is so...so absolutely and utterly worthy. That he is not less than his brother, not less than every piece of crud he deals with in his weird and fucked up life we all lead.

It's gonna take time as I'm pretty sure he's spent just about his whole life not believing in himself but I'm here now and I'm gonna work on him, slowly and carefully until he see himself as I, and we, see/know and love him.

Yeah, so as I said, it all started with the cake and then if they didn't knock me sideways into Sunday with a gift too.

I really didn't expect a gift. Come on, they're boys and, on the whole, boys need a sister to have even a notional chance of buying a gift for a girl. Well a halfways decent, girl-appropriate and delighting gift, and seeing as I'm their only sister, and I couldn't really buy a surprise gift for myself, then I wasn't anticipating anything much.

So then Sam reaches a package from the chair that's pushed up under the table.

"It's from both of us..."

He says and he nods toward Dean as he edges the package toward me.

It's a long and thin, wrapped in soft, white tissue paper and he lays it in my outstretched hands with a open and happy smile on his 'genuinely-looking-better-every-day' face and I feel the breath start to catch in my throat.

"It's to protect you."

I look from Sam to Dean as the older man almost whispers those soft few words. He smiles too. That gentle, kind, lovingly vulnerable smile I've seen only so very occasionally and I feel my eyes start to prickle with tears as my shaky hands slowly peel the paper from this treasure they have given to me.

And within the feather-light cocoon of white lies a delicate and beautiful, lethally sharp, exquisitely pointed silver blade.

And I love it. Love them for giving it to me.

The knife is fine and magnificently crafted, a thing of deceptive strength. It's gleaming planes are etched with sigils and wondrous words, only some of which I understand and I am amazed at the wonderfully heart-stopping beauty of it and of their care in choosing it for me.

"Do you like it?"

I look up into Sam's warm amber eyes and nod because I am too choked to speak and his smile widens as he glances from me to Dean.

"We had it made specially for you."

Dean says as he touches the blade and turns it in my hands so the light catches a delicately scrolling phrase that is etched onto the pure white metal.

"There's not another like it anywhere."

I blink my eyes, pushing the happy tears that pool there to my cheeks and try and focus on the script.

"Meus...carus...s...sanctimonialis?"

Dean nods and his fathomless green eyes wrap and enfold my heart with his love.

"Do you know what it says?"

He smiles hesitantly and he is suddenly years younger and I see in him, for a moment, all the things he's never had a chance to be. I see shy and scared, needy and hopeful, brave and resilient, vulnerable and loving, above all loving, and I want to just...just hold him.

So I do.

I'm across the space that separates us, me and my brothers, and then they are in my arms.

And the tears run down my cheeks as I hiccup...

"W...what's...it...m...mean?"

Their arms close about me.

"It means...My Beloved Sister."

Dean whispers, tightening me to him.

And I am suddenly, wonderfully, amazingly overwhelmed that I have found my family.

Ends


	13. Chapter 13 - Forfeit

**A Moment with My Brother**

**Forfeit. **

Sam and I are sitting at the library table, the companionable and contented silence shared like a mega-gulp and sweet buttered popcorn between us. We are lost in nerd-heaven, cataloging and categorizing the thirteen miniature cajun hex-books we found in one of the bunker's dustier storerooms.

They are dainty and delicate, each one bound in different colours of heavily-patinated old leather. The surfaces are tooled with symbols and sigils in gold and the creamy vellum sheets within whisper their deadly, sing-song-y, creole curses.

We couldn't be happier...Well, unless you could deliver Nyota Uhura for me! :0)

And so we barely notice Dean as he silently enters from the kitchen and deposits steaming mugs of rich, dark coffee before us.

"You've been at it for three hours, I think you might be thirsty."

He nods demurely toward me, his wide green eyes cast down.

"My Queen..."

I add nonchalantly and his head dips lower.

"My Queen."

He mumbles subserviently, adding a plate of warm peanut-butter/chocolate cookies (boy, that man can bake) to the table as he speaks and Sam's nose twitches in slight bewilderment at my comment but in happy acknowledgement of the proffered sweetmeats as he looks up to his sibling.

"H...holy freaking crap, D...Dean!"

Sam splutters, his gawkishly long arms flailing in shock as he takes in the older man's humble demeanor and attire and I'm forced to stifle a giggle as Dean almost carries off an air that is a mixture of affronted pride and nonchalant disregard.

Almost carries off...Yeah, but only almost... as evidenced by the adorable but furious blush that creeps up his neck and the wiggling of his little bare toes on the cool marble of the bunker's floor.

"What in all holy hell are you wearing?"

Sam gasps, wheezing around his total disbelief like an asthmatic at a dander and bed-bug seminar and I raise a triumphant eyebrow toward my big bro...my big bro who lost big-style at forfeit canasta to me last night and is now paying the price.

"Or...Not...wearing...more to the point..."

I throw in, my best Cruella D'Vil persona of multiple, cohabiting personas rising to the fore and Dean winces but stoically refuses to acknowledge me.

"Oh hell, no..."

Sam whispers as he throws his hands up to his eyes, rocking slightly as Dean squirms before him.

"Bleach...Charlie, please...Bleach for my eyeballs this minute."

Dean huffs, all pouty, his full lips now pink as his blushed cheeks.

"Come on, Sammy. Cut me some slack here. Pretend you're blind or something..."

His voice is wounded petulance with top notes of pinky-perfect embarrassment and adorably pathetic and Sam scissors his fingers open and peeks cautiously once more at the vision before him.

Dean is wearing his favorite MoL, looted from the 'dead-guy' wardrobe, long, green apron.

It was designed in a time when aprons were de rigueur and it...fortuitously...covers him from mid chest to just above the knee and because he's slim at the waist (huge shoulders but tapered like a he-man of a hero-hunter should be) it wraps almost, but not quite totally around him.

I say fortuitously...

Because...due to his appalling skill at canasta...(No I did not cheat! I'm offended you would say that...)

That's pretty much all he's wearing.

HeeHee.

Giggle...giggle.

Hey, I said it was forfeit canasta and he lost...big style...so his forfeit...You're getting the picture aren't ya?

Sam shakes his head, perplexion oozing from his over-height follicles as he shakily lowers his hands and he can just about manage a disbelieving...'Why?' as I smile so hard that my teeth ache.

"Lost at cards to Charlie..."

Dean pouts some-more, his laser-eyed, death glare trying to lock tractor beams on me but I have my phaser on blast not stun and I blow him outta the water by puckering up and kissing him a victorious, yet sisterly peck.

Sam swivels on his bunker wheel-y chair and his amber orbs lock on mine.

"So you made him..?"

He stutters to a halt, unable to commit his big-bro's shame to words so I supply the obvious for him.

"Be my hand-maiden...Wait on us, all day...like that. Yup, sure did."

I grin and Sam gulps.

"But..."

His voice falters with dread.

"But...Naked, Charlie?"

There's a sharp intake of breath from Dean and we both glance at him before turning back to each other.

"No, silly! Would I do such a thing?"

I chide and Sam's brows lower in confusion, but relief.

"Dean's not naked."

I explain and Sam almost smiles...

Then I let him have it.

"No, not naked, Sam cause see, apart from the apron..."

Dean sucks in his breath loudly, halting me, before babbling urgently.

"Charlie...My Queen...no please...Sam doesn't need to know..."

I hold my hand up, the finger of 'be silent my sorry-ass, canasta-loosing sibling' extended to still his nervous lips.

"Enough...You may leave us...Hand-Maiden."

I smile and wave imperiously and Dean breathes a (premature) sigh of relief and begins to back from our presence.

"Owh no..."

I chide and he stops, the blush leaping forth unchecked to ruddy his cheeks.

'You don't get away with it that easy..."

Dean whines, his terror-wide green eyes imploring, begging for mercy but I give no quarter.

"You may...turn and leave us."

I whirl my finger, dizzying, frenzied-polka style and Dean fiddles unconsciously with his apron, trying to draw it more encompassingly about him.

"Char...lie...eeeee!, please?"

He pleads.

I shake my head and I swear his lip quivers a little.

"Please...my Queen..."

Ooooo, nice try, Winchester but no cigar. This is too good to miss. I grin.

"You lost, Winchester. Suck it up and pay your forfeit!"

I remind him, my rightfully regal Queen of MoonDoor haughtiness compelling him finally to his fate.

And so, he sighs in abject defeat and turns, his bare foot squeaking nervously on the marble.

And Sam gasps as his brother's pink-silk-covered, 'you will serve us all day, Hand-Maiden', naked but for your Queen's pretty girly panties' ass bobs and shimmies it's way back to the kitchen.

ends


	14. Chapter 14 - Guilty Secrets

**A Moment with My Brother **

**Guilty Secrets **

It's the look on Dean's face that makes it priceless.

He know's that he's busted and his guilty, green gaze and babbled denials are gonna count for nothing now that his dirty little secret is out.

And I don't need to tell ya that Sam's loving it.

Oh, we had both suspected for...well forever maybe, that he wasn't being entirely truthful but he was, overtly, pretty convincing, in his actions anyway but now I...we...see that it was all really all just a fragile and pernicious facade.

And we are going to take endless and deeply satisfying pleasure in tormenting him with it.

What is it?

What's Dean's guilty pleasure?

What has he been hiding so carefully from all of us for so long?

Well, let's rewind ten minutes and you can see first hand like we did. It'll be more fun that way.

So prepare yourself...it's shocking...those of a nervous disposition should grab onto whatever (who-ever) it takes to get them through this...

Got your blankie/teddy/fallen angel to cuddle?

Okay, here we go...

snSNsn

_Ten Minutes Earlier._

He'd not expected us back.

That was clear, but then we had said we might be all day and we would have been if'n 'Thingumabobbies and Doodahs', our first port of call and now favorite 'hex bag and general protection spell content' stockists hadn't happened to have both pelargonium capitatum absolute and cured alligator juniper chips in stock/ no problem/ buy 'em there and then.

That they did was weird/cool/fortuitous but also meant that instead of Sam and I being out all day, we walked back into the bunker, laden with our bags full of goodies, some hours ahead of schedule.

It was lunch time and Dean was in the kitchen. We could hear him pottering (god, that man could potter for England...Hey, pause just a mo...Funny saying that isn't it? Do the English potter a lot then? And what the fuck is pottering anyway? Who knows but I guess they must. That and queue...and play cricket...and drink tea...Sorry, I digress, concentrate, Charlie!).

Anyways Dean was pottering about in the kitchen and we heard him...(he's a noisy potterer), but he didn't hear us.

Why, you ask?

Well, see now there were a number of us all living in our sweetly strange but somehow thriving little ex angel/ broken down hunter/ nerdy MoonDoor royalty commune...all of whom have differing and oft clashing musical taste, Dean had finally given in and had taken to using the I-Pod Sam bought for him so we, the more discerning listeners, don't have to be deafened each day with his classic (yeah...classic, my ass!) rock.

This of course meant though that, cause he has it at 'destroy your ear-drum in sixty seconds' level most of the time, he's easier to sneak up on.

And no, that doesn't seem to worry him. Which is bizarre as you and I know cause Dean's spent his entire life being a 'best boy scout be prepared for anything' Winchester and now he's un-fazed by being deaf to imminent attack.

But see, he only ever wears his phones in the bunker...'the locked-down, protected to the absolute and infinite degree from anything and everything known to man and then some', bunker.

So he's cool with it...cause the chances of anything nasty sneaking up on him is just about zero...or so he thought. (Insert fiendish cackling here.)

And thus, he walks in from the kitchen, carrying his glass and a bottle of dressing to find Sam and I staring at the plate that held his dirty, shameful, guilty little secret, where it sits on the library table innocently waiting to be consumed.

snSNsn

"Is that...is that what I think it is?"

Sam's face is an absorbing mixture of shock, amazement and...'I am gonna trade on this for a long, long time' and Dean nearly clears an olympic hurdle he jumps so high at our unexpected presence.

"Crap!"

He shouts real loud, (still got his phones in!), sloshing his beer as he hurriedly deposits his burdens on the table and makes to distract us.

"What...when...th...thought you were out all day?"

Dean mumbles as he pulls the buds from his ears and works on trying to minimize the distinctly pink glow that is creeping flirtatiously up his neck.

I hold the bags up for him to see, smiling seductively...with just a touch of playful evil as a sub-text.

"We found all we needed straight away. So...'Hunny...we're home!'"

He nods nervously, eyes shifting from the bags to me to Sam who tips his chin toward the plate on the table. The blush now reddens his cheeks and Sam goes in for the kill.

'So, that is what I think it is? Isn't it?"

Dean glances as indicated and then blinks slowly, too slowly and it's almost like he's trying the 'if I can't see ya, ya can't be there' gambit...but it don't pay dividends for him this time.

And Sam smiles, triumph beginning to enliven his face.

And I think...'Holy crap...we have him...the mighty Dean Winchester, my big bro, caught bang to rights in his wanton wickedness.

But Deano doesn't go gown that easily, No-siree-Bob he don't. He kicks in his noggin, re-boots his melon and pow! He's back in the game...

"I made lunch for ya..."

He feints unconvincingly, indicating the plate of...

Have ya guessed yet?

Bet ya have...

Ewh, No, yeuch. So not that, ya freak! Who'd eat that?

It's salad, okay? Crispy, crunchy, oh-so-good-for-ya-body-not-a-bit-of-dead-processed -cow-anywhere-on-the-plate', salad.

And it is evidently Dean's lunch.

Voluntarily...Dean's lunch.

No coercion to eat it, no 'too poorly to get something for himself and Sam made him eat it'. Nothing like that. It's just Dean...Dean Winchester...choosing to eat salad for his lunch.

And Sam's seen through his honestly pathetic deflection attempt.

"There's only one plate..."

He points at the shameful repast and motions with the same finger between himself and me.

"And there's two of us."

Dean squirms and doesn't answer.

I chip in, eyeing up the damming evidence...(Hoowee, This is just like 'Clue'! And the murderer is...duh-duh-duuuhh! Miss Bradbury, in the Batcave with the demon knife.)

"And you didn't expect us back so why would you put food out for us?"

"U...uh...I..."

Dean stutters and dithers and looks just plain damn guilty...

And it's adorable. Just too freaking adorable.

And Sam's smile is three foot wide, as is mine as we revel in his shamefaced disquiet.

"Okay...alright!"

His wide, hunter-buffed shoulders droop and Dean raises his hands in grudging defeat.

"It's MY lunch, okay?...it's lunch time...I'm hungry...so I'm eating my lunch. You got a problem with that?"

He tries for 'tough, don't mess with me, I ain't in the mood for discussion' but it's ruined by his furtive glances towards his buddy, 'Cesar' who just sits, minding his own leafy business on the table so Sam and I...my little-big-bro tag-teamer...administer the coup de grace.

"So...Dean..."

Sam strolls across the floor and using his added height so effectively to his/our advantage, rests his arm around Dean's slumping shoulders and cajoles him down into his seat...at the table...before his heaped serving of juicy, whole/health/rabbit food salad.

"So, when we aren't here..."

Dean wriggles, his eyes flitting nervously from the (I must say) delicious looking plateful to mine. His gaze says 'Help me out here, Charlie!' and part of me wants to cause he is disgustingly cute when he's all naughty trapped puppy but it's just really too...too...too fucking good an opportunity not to get maximum squirm out of. So I shake my head and grin as Sam continues.

"You eat..."

Sam lifts Dean's silverware and stabs a hearty forkful of leaves which he twirls merrily before his brother's busted face.

"Salad."

Dean sighs and opens his pouting lips to respond but Sam shushes him with an accusatory finger.

"Salad, Dean. You choose (he emphasizes choose and the defeated, elder hunter flinches involuntarily) to eat salad."

It's not a question cause the evidence ('Clue' again...And the murderer is...The Queen of MoonDoor, in the MoL Bunker with a plate of arugula) is there, for us all to see, cannot be denied and any fight that was remaining goes out of the guilty, bang to rights, Winchester.

"Yes..."

Dean mumbles miserably.

Sam glances at me, sheer wicked delight lighting up his face.

"What was that?"

He gloats and Dean looks up, 'please don't make me say it again' threatening to quiver his lips.

"I didn't hear you, Dean?"

Sam places the fork on the plate and Dean sighs again. Louder this time, and if he had a white flag and a pole I think he'd be running up his ensign.

"Yes...okay, Sam. I chose to eat salad. Alright, you happy now? I was gonna eat salad without you making me and even though there was meat in the fridge, and left over pizza and...god help me...pie...I was gonna eat...salad. There I said it. okay? You satisfied?"

He hangs his head in shame and Sam laughs out-loud in triumph.

I grab the dressing bottle Dean had dropped to the table when we surprised him with our presence some minutes earlier and pour a sexy little drizzle over the crunchy leaves as I take the fork from his plate and place it in our defeated sibling's sweaty paw.

"NomNomNom..."

I giggle as I encourage him to stab sulkily at his nice fresh greens.

"Betcha you really like your vege's too, huh? Not a carrot-hater at all really, are ya?"

He shakes his head contritely, the forkful of arugula hovering toward his pouting lips and Sam scoffs triumphantly.

'So no more complaining if I suggest we have something healthy for dinner once in a while?"

Dean turns his best wide-eyed, emerald-greens on his brother and shakes some more.

"And now we know your dirty little secret there's no bitching that it's rabbit food and you can't survive on it?"

Dean sighs.

"Cross my heart, Sammy."

He looks so innocent, so convincing and I look at Sam with my 'chalk-a-point-up-to-us' face on as we share a self-congratulatory smile...

Only to have it turn to laughter as Dean mutters.

"But if you even try calling me freakingThumper, I will end you both!"

Ends


	15. Chapter 15 Happy

**A Moment with My Brother**

**Happy **

We're in the library, sitting round the big, formal oak table however we're anything but formal. We're officially chillin...yeah, veg-ing out...majoring on relaxing and I have to say that now we're starting to get the hang of it (come on, it's not really been one of any of our natural skill-sets), it's a pretty damn fine way to spend a wet afternoon.

There's some soft, sweet MoL easy-listening muzak insinuating itself from the fuzzy old speakers and the mouthwatering waft of baking bread is floating in from the kitchen.

Yes, I did say baking bread. Dean has mastered pies...and cakes...and cookies...and has segued neatly into bread. And damn, if'n it ain't fine on the palette.

Sam is reading. Not because he's so sick and weak that's it's just about all he can do cause he isn't any more...sick and weak I mean. Sam's doing okay...nope, strike that. Sam's finally and fantastically, doing good.

He doesn't shake all the time any more, or get deathbed breathless just sitting there. Nor is he skin and bone like he was...but then remember I said Dean's bakes now and Sam's found his mother-load of a sweet tooth. His amber eyes are bright again and he can stay awake for normal lengths of time without looking like he's an extra in a low budget zombi-pocalypse flick. My little-big brother has come back to us and we are happy.

Cas is here too. He's sitting across the table from Sam, his perennially tousled head bent studiously over his task, a look of pure concentration on his ernest face and I smile...cause his task is...god help him...sewing lost buttons onto a pile of old shirts that belong to the collective menfolk of my adopted tribe.

Dean thought it'd be good for him to learn. Now he's fallen and can't angel-whammy things back into shape...part of the 'humanization' regime that sometimes sits well with the ex-celestial being and sometimes...doesn't. Those are the days Dean never leaves Cas' side.

And I'm...doing fuck all and loving it. In fact I think I have found my raison d'être!

snSNsn

Dean joins us ten minutes later when Sam's two chapters further on but Cas is still on the same button as he has been for the last half hour. What can I tall ya? He's determined...dedicated even, but not what one could call particularly dextrous.

Dean strolls round the table and deposits one of the cold long-necks he's carrying next to Sam who looks up and distractedly smiles his thanks, his head lost in what ever world is leaping from the tattered paperback in his freakishly huge hands. Dean nods contentedly and moves in an easy silence onto Cas, his bare feet barely whispering on the quiet cool marble of the bunker floor.

You know he's more often than not barefoot, now that I come to think about it and today his ancient, 'a little bit too long so that they are fraying at the hem', jeans are so washed-out, pale blue that they make him look like a hippy at a sun-drenched music festival.

And now I'm on that train of thought, his perennial plain, dark, t-shirt uniform has softened too of late and I realize that when he took Cas to the thrift to gussie him up in new duds (anything but that damned trench-coat) he must have bought new-old shirts for himself, too.

Today's for example is a sort of...spearmint colour, much paler than the green of his eyes but in that same 'divine spectrum of natures finest' that defines his stunning gaze. The shirt's a bit big on him, makes him look somehow...I don't know...younger.

It says 'What don't kill me...Don't...cause I kill it first' and I smile at the absolute appropriateness of the hunter-mission-statement epithet, wondering who owned such a garment before Dean adopted it.

He tries not to distract Cas as he passes him by. Just pops the cold beer beside the pile of shirts and nods encouragingly as the reluctant tailor glances up briefly, before continuing his ham-fisted thread-pulling. Dean moves on, his hand unconsciously just brushing the angel's arm.

And so he gets to me and I slide out the chair to my left on it's smooth old wheels and beckon him to 'sit-a-while' in exchange for the sweating bottle of brew.

He does, in that graceful, boneless glide that I suddenly and totally understand is a product/blessing/gift of the bunker for my normally, 'wound-tighter-than-a-coil', brother.

I clink beers with him and we drink as Dean leans back and stretches his long, 'would be longer if they weren't so bowed' legs to rest them on the stretcher of the table and I could swear I hear a small sigh of contentment hum from his moist lips.

And I do the math...add it all together...and watch as his relaxed...(oh my god, isn't that a wonderful term to apply to Dean Winchester?), totally, wonderfully relaxed face takes in the scene before him.

His eyes linger first on Sam and I see in his gaze the joy at having pulled him back from the edge, brought him back to life.

Then Dean takes in Cas and his mouth curls into a soft, sweet smile and I struggle for a minute to find a word, the right word to apply to describe what I see.

But then it comes to me.

The word I am looking for is happy.

My brother, my Dean, is happy.

And so too am I.

Ends


	16. Chapter 16 - Galactic Green

Many thanks to all reading, following and reviewing these little 'moments', your comments are most happily received.

**A Moment with My Brother.**

**Galactic Green **

"How's he doing?"

Sam's been on the supply run and is loaded down with bags. Groceries mainly, heavy on the 'heat and serve' end of the domestic goddess scale cause Dean's not up to cooking for us at the moment and boy are we all feeling the loss, and dressings and pills and potions for us to administer if we can pursude our reluctant patient that it's in his best interest.

Yeah, I know. Good luck to us, the collective us, on that one. Cause Dean is anything but the perfect patient. He'll rarely cooperate for Sam...I think it's something genetic or maybe it's a boy:boy thing? Ya know, testosterone and machismo?

Although he will sometimes submit and pop a pain med for Cas and Cas is a boy? Well, ex-celestial being in a male vessel...now turned human...type of boy? And even for Cas, he'll only take them if he thinks no one's watching.

And as to his dressings? Well all I'll say is the meds are a doddle compaired to getting his bandages changed. Usually Dean far prefers to pretend he doesn't have need of them at all or failing that he'd just have everyone believe he can 'do it himself'.

How, I ask you with his right hand all torn up and his opposite shoulder only just nicely popped back into place, I'm sure I don't know, but to Dean it's all irrelevant cause he just don't want to be danm well 'fussed at'.

He lets me do them though cause I have worked out just how to handle him.

If I'm matter of fact and quietly insistent about it and I give him my red-headed, little-sis, stink-eye look that says 'be difficult, Winchester and I will hurt you!'. Yeah, that usually does it.

So anyway, Sam plops the shopping down all over the floor and goes to peep at our 'sleeping beauty' where he's tucked up at one end (Cas is at the other, feet curled up under him reading Watership Down...What? He likes rabbits...) of the ridiculously long couch that occupies one whole wall of the bunker's lounge. How they ever got that thing down the stairs has me beat...or maybe they just built it in the lounge? I don't think they had Ikea flat pack back then though?

Anyhow, as I said, Dean's tucked up all sleepy and cosy under his favorite tartan throw, shoulder nestled in his sling (eh god's the sweat I worked up getting him to put that on) and his bandaged hand propped on a small stack of pillows.

And he looks a little pale, but for a guy who took down most of a flitter of faeries (okay okay I know it's technically a macra sidhe but flitter suits them so much better...well except I suppose when they're beating the crap outta ya!). Anyway, he's more or less alright.

Oh he's sore and bruised and there's his hand...and the shoulder...but other than that he's doing pretty well.

And Sam can see that. I know cause he agreed to go on the provisions run and he'd never leave Dean, not even with Cas and I here if he thought he was real bad. But all the same he checks his brother over carefully and we let him.

"Charlie?"

Sam keeps it quiet and Dean snuffles but doesn't really stir.

"Yeah?"

I whisper back and Sam points to Deans's bare feet where they lie on the couch, sticking out from his blankie.

"Why is Dean wearing toe-nail polish?"

Sam's face is a bewitching mixture of utter bemusement mixed with a just a soupcon of pure horror and I can't help but smile at how it animates his face. I'm tempted not to explain simply cause the confused puppy look is so adorable on him but it wouldn't be fair, he is my little-big brother when all's said and done.

"Well, Dean woke up while you we're off and I pursuaded him to let me re-dress his hand..."

I glance at Sam where he's settled on the cushion next to Dean's feet. He looks at me but I can see it's not making sense for him yet so I press on.

"And after that I encouraged him into his sling..."

I gesture at the functional, dark blue, cotton and velco device that Dean hates with a passion cause it, and I quote, 'trusses him up like a Christmas Turkey' and Sam follows my line of sight and nods.

"Okay, well done on all that..."

Sam smiles and I preen a little.

"But...I'm not seeing where the toe nail polish comes in?"

Oh well yeah, I guess it is still a few 'degrees of Kevin Bacon' away isn't it? So I jump back in with a few more clues.

"So after all that, he was hurting. Said his neck's stiff from the sling and his shoulder was sore and so I offered to run the Bradbury magic massage fingers over him but when I tried, well his neck hurt too much to really get to the problem and he was just so damn tense anyway..."

Sam nods some more...and bless him he's trying to understand but it's still slipping from him like quicksilver off'n a propecters pan.

"So...seeing as his top end hurt so much..."

I make an over the top, theatrical swoop with my eyes from Dean's head to his little pink toes, taking Sam's amber gaze right along with me.

"I worked the magic fingers...magic on his feet!"

Understanding dawns happily for the younger Winchester (college smarts aren't always all they're cracked up to be) and he smiles.

"Oh, I get it. So you gave him a foot-rub to relax him?"

I break into a little spontaneous clap for him and Dean stirs a little, wriggling contentedly and stretching his curled legs out so the flat of his feet press against Cas's thigh but the ex-angel is irremovable from his lapine quest and he mearly drops one hand, distractedly, to rest on Dean's shin as he carries on reading.

"Yeah, 'xactly."

I confirm and Sam nods, satisfied that he understands...for about 5 seconds...then his face darkens, the puppy-gog returns and he sighs.

"So...then...he asked you to...paint his toe-nails?"

That get's Castiel's attention, (I knew he was liteneing, despite Hazel and Fiver's cotton-tailed conundrums. You know, now I think about it there are some interesting parallel's between the dilemas of the bunny's and the boys...oh but that's for another time!) and he snorts derisively, looking up for his tattered novel.

"Well...not exactly asked, Sam."

He grins and looks at me, and Sam follows him to me in even deeper bemusement.

I roll my eyes. Gee, you really do have to spell it out simple sometimes.

"So...my magic finger foot rub sent him off to happy bo-bo-land...all snuggled up like you see under his blankie with his tootsies a-stickin out."

Cas widens his eyes, as do I and Sam nods in urgent verification. Yup, he's on board the bus so far, now to just cling him on for the full ride.

"And Cas was reading..."

Cas holds up his beloved bunny book and Sam gives him a thumbs up.

"So I figured I'd kill the time till you got home by doing my nails."

I wiggle my beautifully manicured finger at Sam and he nods appreciatively at my cobalt blue with fine, fillegree MoL symbols in white.

"Nice."

He confirms and I glow a little. Well it takes a steady hand to do such intricate work. Not everyone can be an 'onycho-artiste' you know?

"And so Dean..?"

Sam's bemused face is back and he looks from me to Cas and back to me.

"And so the bottles of polish were right there in my special little, 'every bottle in it's correct spectrum-hued' place case and..."

"Galactic green."

Cas buts in, says it like it explains everything. You know with that head canted to one side, 'i'm otherworldly', terrible cute look on his face and I know Sam's trying but he really has no freaking idea where we are going with this...so I help him out.

"So Cas picked out the galactic green and...Dean's toes were just sitting there..."

'And I've never, ever painted a nail before...finger or toe..."

Cas tells Sam earnestly and Sam, blows out a resigned breath.

"Neither have I."

Sam stutters in sorta-shock but time moves on and somehow they bond silently for a moment before Cas continues, his hand now wrapped casually around Dean's foot.

"So I thought I'd have a go."

Sam stares briefly at Dean's toes again and a look of 'well sure, I can see that' flits onto his not-unhappy face.

"Why galactic green?"

Is the unlikely but if you follow the perhaps slightly abstract train of thought from Sam and Cas thinks for less than a nano-second before coming out with his perfectly logical response.

"It matches his eyes."

The ex-angel says, simply and we all share a little 'mmmm' sort of moment bafore Sam, seemingly satisfied, rises and scoops the groceries up in his gigantic hands and heads to the kitchen.

And he pauses at the door, turning to look back at us, a devilishly wicked smile having replaced the innocent puppy-dog.

"I am so gonna enjoy you explaining that again when he wakes up."

ends

End note.

Yes, my toe-nails are currently Galactic Green and I wouldn't have minded a bit if Cas...or Dean...or Sam...or Charlie had offered to paint 'em for me!


	17. Chapter 17 - Freak Show

Thank you to everyone who continues to read these little glimpses into Charlie's bunker life. And to klu and lewlou15 here's the consequence of the last's chapter's galactic green incident. I hope it meets expectations.

**A Moment With My Brother**

**Freak Show**

I've noticed it for a while now. Certainly the last two or three days.

Dean's just not himself.

Oh I know he just nicely had the crap kicked outta him and he's still sore and bruised and a bit wobbly from the meds but it isn't just that.

He's...

I don't know.

Just...somehow...off.

I thought it was just me at first. You know worrying unnecessarily...as I can do, but the more I watch him (not-stalker-ish at all...healthy sisterly concern and all that)...Well, there's, just something amiss.

It's kinda like someone has turned out that essential spark that lights him up and makes him...him. You know, Dean...My Dean. My brother.

Oh he still says 'I'm fine' even when I know that his shoulder hurts and he's bruised and sore all over and dressing his smashed up hand is killing him. So the words are him but the essential bristle and bravado that backs up the ridiculously unbelievable statement is somehow not quite in place. So, see that means I know he hurts, and he knows I know, but he doesn't meet my challenge of him knowing I know with his usually ballsiness.

Did that make any sense at all? It did to me but then I speak fluent 'Charlie'.

Look, simply put, he's letting me see he's...well, hurting and not just physically. Not just his actual wounds. No this goes deeper. There's a vulnerability that I've always known is there but normally he would die rather than let us see and it's out there. Written on him. Like he can't even gather the strength to crank up his braggadocio enough to try and hide it from us.

Now is that just cause he's in so much physical pain? You know from his latest big, hurty booboos? Well see, I don't think it is. Oh don't get me wrong. He must hurt like stink. I mean in average, normal, not-Batman-mega- brave-hunter, terms he must be at a 100 on a scale of 1 to 10, but for him? For Dean? Well, shoot, he's had worse, on paper and in reality and been able to maintain the facade. Keep up the stupid, pig-headed act that he's fine and can just roll with the proverbial punches.

So what's happened this time?

What the fuck is wrong with my wonderful, precious, beloved, big bro?

Gotta go think...

Back soon...

snSNsn

Ah, there you are. (Smiles and waves.)

Welcome back, I'm glad you could rejoin us and you'll be pleased to know that between us, Sam, Cas and I, we have a hypothesis on the Dean conundrum which may just hold water, complex as he is and opting out of double-blind testing you understand.

So here it is and this has taken hours of hushed conversation while Dean was safely tucked up in his memory-foam haven to come to, so hear me out before ya jump in.

We think Dean's pissed cause...

Cas painted his toe-nails galactic green.

There.

In a nutshell.

That's the reason that he's so sad. That his indomitable spirit seams a bit...you know, broken.

Cause Cas, his ex-angel, here-one-minute-gone-the-next, human-padawan friend, graffiti'd him up digitally.

No, no, don't scoff disdainfully in that manner...I said wait, didn't I? There's more to come.

I know it doesn't make real good sense at just that, so let me elaborate.

Back to our two hour chat which saw us, intrepid hunters and MoonDoor goddess that we are, assemble a biggish crock of evidence that pointed to Dean thinking we don't respect him as an equal member of the team, hunter, brother or general human being, not to put too fine a point on it or over-dramatize.

Oh, of course, he didn't come out and say that...well, hell no he didn't. This is Dean. Repressed, don't-ask-me-to-do-feelings, Winchester, so course he didn't come out and actually say any of this. No, this was a collective, Hercule Poirot job on the tiny comments, little looks, green-eyed vulnerability that has been oozing from him since...well since Cas painted his toe-nails.

We pieced together the quiet comments of 'don't worry about me' and 'it doesn't matter' and 'whatever's no trouble' and along with sad little sighs and sideways looks, well It all adds up to Dean doesn't feel valued as older brother.

Shit!

What a mess we made.

Cas is beside himself cause he really didn't mean galactic green and his quasi-human-ness to result in this and I'm kicking myself cause, dammit, I should be more sensitive and Sam? Well Sam just knows he shouldn't have even gone on the grocery run and left Dean alone. Cause alone means vulnerable and now he's gone and got hurt. Which is Sam's worst nightmare and ours too.

So we're all a disgrace.

A sad, sorry, contrite as hell, what the fuck can we do to make amends, disgrace.

And how are we ever, even gonna broach any of this with Dean to ask him?

And therefore have a chance of making it right?

Awh...Crap!

More discussion needed...

snSNsn

And...you're back in the room...and so like a bolt of (ex) celestial lightning...

Cas had the answer.

Just came out with the glaringly obvious.

God bless all angels.

Especially nerdy, trench-coat wearing, hamburger-loving, mussy haired, blue-eyed fallen ones.

snSNsn

_An hour later. Dean's bedroom. _

Our brother, our sleepy, (pain-meds), slightly-woozy brother is propped up in his memory-foam cocoon looking at us suspiciously as we sit, contritely like three naughty, we-pee'd-on-the-carpet, puppies, at the base of his bed and as agreed, Cas speaks on our collective behalf.

"Dean..."

Dean's face is a mixture of incomprehension, nervousness and 'get-me-the-shit-outta-here-cause-I-have-no-idea-w here-this-is-going' and I figure he'd bolt for the door if'n he wasn't too unsteady on his feet for that but I think he's silently mouthing the Rituale Romanum - "_Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus...",_ under his breath.

"Un, huh?"

He manages to squeeze out as we all smile smiles at him that freak him out even more..."_Omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio..."._

"We wish to know.._."_

Cas nods to Sam and I...

"That if by painting your nails you feel we emasculated you and rendered your position as leader of our..."

The ex-celestial wavelength pauses here, tilting his head, pug-like, to the side as he searches for the right word.

"Tribe...untenable?"

Oh well hellfire and damnation, Cas! What happened to 'be subtle', and 'build up to it slowly'. Oh and I also remember 'don't freak him out' featuring in there.

I risk a glance at Sam and he's paler than Dean and that's saying something cause Dean looks like he's trying to blend into the snow-white of his pillow. Anything to get away from the awful, terrifying, in-human directness of the ham-fisted once-angel.

Okaaaaayyyyy!

Wheel out the UN Peacekeepers.

Charlie to the rescue.

Feminine diplomacy and tact called for here if we are to retrieve the situation..

"What Cas is trying to say, Dean..."

But Dean's bandaged, slightly shaking right hand raises up in front of me and stills that thought on my guilt-ridden lips as he speaks.

"Emasculate, Cas, is not a word I want to hear from you ever again...at least not in association with me. Got that?"

Dean's voice is a bass, deep in his chest, beware-you-are-on-quicksand-sorta growl and, to give him his credit, Cas does the correct thing in this circumstance and just lowers his eyes and nods humbly as Dean continues.

"But if you're asking if making me up, while I was asleep and unable to resist, like a sparkly-polished, big-fucking girl hurt my feelings..."

We all wince, perhaps audibly.

"Then, yeah...it kinda did."

Ouch, ouch and fucking ouch. That stings!

Well, naturally we, Sam, Cas and I go leaping into apology meltdown, all hovering closer to a shrinking-back Dean and babbling in cacophonous unison. And it's too much and Dean pulls the covers up to his chin, wincing at the pain the sudden movement delivers. And crap if that don't make us feel all the more brutish and callous so I step us down, pull us back and we re-group, silent and pitiful at the foot of his bed.

"What can we do to say sorry?"

I ask softly cause the last thing I would ever want to do is hurt Dean and I know this has and I /we /Sam, Cas and I feel like terrible, insensitive jerks and he looks at us, all wide, damp green eyes in his pale, wan, vulnerable face and smiles sadly for us.

"It doesn't matter."

He whispers and oh god, I feel like the heel of the century and Cas is hyperventilating and Sam...well you can imagine and he wasn't even actually there for the whole actual galactic-greening!

"It does...It does matter. It matters to us all a whole hell of a lot."

I say vehemently and the boys nods say it too but Dean just shrugs and pulls the blanket closer and damn, if my heart isn't breaking.

And then Cas speaks. In his no-beating-about-the-bush, I-really-am-winging-(Freudian!)-it way but it's okay this time cause it's what's needed. No crap, just direct and honest.

"I'm sorry Dean."

His big blue eyes search Dean's and thank god, they don't get shoved away.

"We're all sorry. We were insensitive. We did not realize how this ill thought through action would impact on you."

Dean shrugs again but it's a bit less down-trodden, less unworthy and I feel my self induced and hateful DefCon status ratch down one notch.

"'S'okay, Cas."

And there's a softness, that fond, ever-forgiving lilt in Dean's words and suddenly we all three know it'll be alright. That we'll learn our lesson and because Dean is Dean, it'll be alright.

So I'm kinda surprised when Cas says...and this isn't something we rehearsed in our 'how-the-freak-do-we-handle-this' earlier planning session but Sam and I go with it.

"You are generous in your forgiveness, Dean and we appreciate your magnanimity..."

Collective nods...

"But I feel we should do some penance to make amends..."

Ohh-oh!

But the once-angel's on a roll that's unstoppable.

"So I propose that we subject ourselves to the same role reversal scenario that we forced upon you so we may fully feel how disquieting it was."

He looks at Sam and I, and Sam nods earnestly as do I.

"So I will paint my nails, Dean and you make select the colour."

Dean narrows his eyes a little, thinking only momentarily before responding.

"Black."

Cas nods and Dean's mouth pulls up just ever so slightly at the corners.

"And me?"

I wave my already painted nails toward Dean but before he can answer Cas cuts in.

"No Charlie, If this is to be properly educational it must be a reversal of role lesson therefore we should craft for you a male persona."

Cas glances from me to Dean who is a little wide-eyed but affirms the new-human's position.

"Stubble and Sam's clothes."

The ex-wavelength muses firmly and I defer, somewhat relieved, to his lead.

"And me?"

Sam squeaks, more than a trace of nervousness shoving his voice up an octave.

Cas ponders, weighing up the tall, super-butch dollop of a hunter for a few moments.

"Braid your hair with ribbons I think."

The solitary squeak becomes a rodent concerto and Dean's face falls and a 'No, it's okay. Doesn't matter' is just about to whisper out and we all know that means 'I don't matter' is re-asserting itself in our brother's generous, ever-giving heart so Sam slams in and saves the day.

"Ribbons it is."

And we move with shared and grateful haste to gain the provisions we need to right the heinous wrong we have be gracefully forgiven for.

snSNsn

And so it is, sixty short minutes later that we stand in the bunker lounge, by the sofa that Dean has felt strong enough to shift to and parade our contrition.

Cas has black finger and toe-nails, his thumb nails sporting tiny white angel wings. Darn if they weren't fiddly to paint! and Dean smiles his approval.

I am rocking a very convincing 5 o'clock shadow, courtesy of Sam's shaved arm and some spirit gum. Gee, these Men of Letters kept a well stocked bunker! The look is completed with a pair of Sam's oldest jeans with about a foot rolled up at the ankle and a t-shirt / plaid combo that hangs to my knees.

I feel back-woods-man-ish and have to resist the urge to scratch and spit and shoot something and again, Dean nods and allows a hint of a smile.

And Sam?

Ah Sam.

The younger, huge, powerful, manly Winchester has his shoulder length chestnut hair braided in two pony tails, tied at the ends with pink and white checked gingham ribbons. (Cas just happened to have seen them, sitting waiting for a purpose on one of his forays into the bunker's big provisions store on the basement floor. Handy huh?)

And he's a picture. Sweet and pretty and a credit to the family. The vision of femininity that John and Mary would have wanted in a daughter.

But the best bit is that Dean smiles. That smile that isn't 'for the public' or the one that holds back the pain within him but the smile that is rare and beautiful. That lights his face with joy and warmth and makes him Dean.

"Thanks, guys."

He casts his eyes over us, his motley band of transgendered, cross-specie'd, rainbow unicorns and we grin, pleased to have regained the ground we had lost with such relative ease and we move to join him on the couch.

Only to have him stop us.

"Oh no..."

He laughs, a wicked light dancing in his golden-green gaze.

"You don't get away that easy..."

I swallow hard, in chorus with my fellow penitents as the boss, our tribe leader, Dean points towards the door.

"Go start the car, Sam. I think we should all go do the grocery run. Let's take this freak show on the road!"

Oh hell ain't payback a wonderful bitch!

ends


	18. Chapter 18 - Towels

**A Moment With My Brother**

**Towels **

Dean's mad with me.

Real mad. He's waxing loud and lyrical about my terrible, wicked failing and he is, I have to say, magnificent to see.

He's standing in the middle of the lounge, dripping and near naked and he's madder'n hell.

His cheeks have a slightly pink blush to them...Get you're mind out of the gutter! His face I mean and you well knew that...and his eyes are that fiery golden green that can entrance man, woman and child at thirty paces. He's gesticulating, as he rants at me, with the hand that's not currently occupied with keeping that very skimpy, fluffy-white, really not much bigger than a hand towel locked about his slim hips as a puddle of shower water forms around his feet.

And he clearly expects me to be humble and apologetic and contrite and I try to be but it's tough in the face of Sam and Cas's giggles but I play my part and nod, my downcast eyes begging forgiveness for my transgressions cause he is my big brother, when all said and done and he deserves my sisterly respect.

"So have I made myself clear this time, Charlie?"

He mutters, his simmering rage powering down in the relative cool of the bunker's high ceilings.

I raise my pretty-pooch (my learned version of Sam's puppy dogs) eyes back to his now not-so-much volcanic gaze and ensure my lip trembles by the correct amount to show I have learned my lesson. At last that is cause well this isn't after all the first time he's mentioned this. Oopsie!

"Yes, Dean."

I nod slowly and precisely, ignoring the fact that Sam and Cas are now openly whooping their delight as Dean wrestles to keep the way too small towel from exposing anything vital.

"Yes what?"

He narrows his eyes, shivering a bit now and I respond quickly so he can try and retain some shred of his dignity in front of the giggling boys.

"I promise I will not use...and I am paraphrasing the damper Winchester in the room here...every freaking, goddamn towel in the entire fucking bunker next time I have a shower without replacing them so the next one in doesn't have to try and cover his massively impressive blah-blah-blah...Dean's words again, ahem!...with a goddamn, fucking wash cloth!"

He holds my eyes for a moment as the cute little pink blush creeps a little further and I risk the smallest smile. So that he knows I love him even though he was mad at me and I will (probably) heed his words.

And so he sees I understand and he nods and turns on his heel, ignoring the wolf whistles from Sam and stalks back towards our shared bathroom, the fluffy white washcloth just about covering his pinker'n ever blush.

ends

Dizz - I thought of you as I wrote this one...no idea why! :0)


	19. Chapter 19 - Roller Derby

**A Moment With My Brother**

**Roller-Derby**

"What the hell possessed you? The pair of you ought to know better..."

Sam's voice does nothing to hide his disappointment in us and I glance at Dean as we stand side by side, in shared disgrace but slightly taller than usual, next to the sofa where Sam is tending to Cas's injuries.

Dean's face is a mixture of regret and embarrassment with a escalating dollop of pissed-off-i-ness at Sam's sanctimonious prissiness. I suspect this might not go well but then the whole incident hasn't really been a total success. Still, worth it though.

It started off okay. When it was just Dean and I and the long straight corridor in the basement of the bunker. It was fine then. In fact we were having a blast. But then Cas came to see what we were laughing so much about our precious find and well, we didn't think it'd do any harm to let him join in.

And anyway, you'd think an ex-celestial being would be intrinsically more...well...graceful? Wouldn't ya? Me too. But he sure isn't.

Anyway, back to simmering Sam.

"You're lucky he just got bumped on the head. He could have cracked his skull wide open, or broken a leg or an arm. Any of ya could..."

Sam snaps parentally and we both nod in our best 'being told off by headmaster' contrition.

"Where did you even find roller skates anyway?"

Sam harumphs exasperatedly and Dean opens his mouth to answer but the former angel is trying to speak, I feel probably in our defense, so we both keep schtumm.

Yeah, I'm almost certain Cas's gonna try and dig us, Dean and I that is, outta the crap but he's kinda woozy and the words are really just woolly-sounding mumbles so it's not really doing anything to sway Sam's bad opinion of us. Way to go for trying though, Cas.

"Come on, Sam. They were just sitting there...A dozen pairs or more of them...in the big store room. They were just calling out to us."

Dean reasons, chancing his arm.

"And we didn't..."

Dean goes to continue but Sam gives him that look that would freeze newly-spewed magma and the words sorta die on his possibly-pouting lips.

Maybe I should try? Sam might listen to me. After all, even though I'm their 'little' sis he knows I'm way more responsible than Dean. Don't look at me like that...I am too!

"We didn't intend him to head butt the column like he did, Sam."

I start and Sam looks up from his ice-packing-the-angel duty and scowls a little but he doesn't shush me totally like he did Dean so I press on as Cas baby-talk-lala's and giggles in the background.

"Dean told him to take it steady at first, not to go too fast but the marble's really slick, Sam..."

I thrum my foot, whizzing my wheels on the pretty pink migmatite to emphasize my point as Sam observes and his big-ole MoL brain absorbs the logic and I think we're gonna get away with it as his face softens a bit but just then Cas pipes up.

"Did I win?"

We all look at him and his deep blue eyes are revolving in slightly opposite directions but he does have a happy, I-don't-give-a-fuck sorta smile on his face.

"Win what, Cas?"

Sam questions checking the duck-egg that is sprouting above Cas's left eyebrow and Dean glances across at me mouthing "Ah, crap!' and I know he's seeing our chances of getting away with our wickedness poofing away on a cloud of slightly-bent angel feathers.

"The race, silly!"

Cas slurrs, looking at each of the three Sam's he sees with slight impatience.

"I ws...winning but Dean cheated..."

"I did not cheat!"

Dean hisses in heatedly, rolling elegantly closer to the couch on his Legacy wheels and sitting down next to the middle of the concussion-generated Sams that Cas is still seeing.

"I just got the drop on ya, that's all. You don't have the power in your thighs like I do."

Dean reasons, pointing at his own admittedly powerful thigh appreciatively but then winces sympathetically as Sam vigorously re-applies the icepack to Cas's ever-growing bump.

"I told ya. It's like when you're watching to see when someone's gonna shoot. Don't watch their finger on the trigger, watch their eyes. Charlie was starting us off and you didn't watch her eyes to see when she was gonna raise the start flag."

Cas nods and pushes himself up on his elbows looking intently, if a little dizzily, at Dean.

"Green..."

He says confidently.

"What ?"

Sam says, voicing all our confusion.

"What was green?"

Cas snorts in collective exasperation at us.

"Eyes."

He points at one of the crowd of Sam/Charlie/Dean's who hover before him and I chirp on.

"No, Cas, my eyes are brown."

(Stunningly brown, so many have said!)

But the ex-feather-fly-boy is loosing the slight concussion battle and chooses this moment to go all sleepybobos on us.

"Nah...they green..."

He drawls and Dean shuffles his wheels, suddenly strangely bashful, as Sam tuts noisily over the whole sorry affair.

And me?

I just smile knowingly.

ends.


	20. Chapter 20 - Peanut-Butter Cups

**This chapter and perhaps who knows maybe subsequent ones are for SPNxBookworm who has been reading and reviewing and suggested a prank war was in order. Here you go my friend. Let war commence! **

**A Moment With My Brother**

**Peanut-butter Cups **

Okay so colour me childish but I've never been one to back down on an intellectual challenge...umm, now then maybe that doesn't really describe what's transpired lately for ya though...minor non-violent skirmish? Nope, still not getting to the essence of what has been rattling the Bunker's oh-so-solid walls for the past few days. No, it's more like batten down the hatches, no-prisoners taken, each for himself, freaking all-out holy-hell of a prank war and it's been a total fucking blast.

It all started of pretty innocently really.

Sam ate Dean's 'Reece's Peanut-butter cups'.

Okay I know it doesn't sound like a major crime but see Dean really, really likes peanut-butter cups. No I mean reeeally. Like hyperventilating, eyes-dilating full-blown, choc-o-gasm, like. So when he does the grocery run he gets loads of candy cause we all enjoy a sweet treat and he tries to get the stuff we all like but it's an unwritten bunker law that the Reece's are his. Exclusively his. On pain of death.

And it's only fair cause he looks after us all. See, me, I like 'Skittles'. They taste heavenly sweet, like sugar rainbows but really it's the pretty colours that draw me. So I have a big, ole glass jar in the pantry and Dean keeps it filled to the brim from a secret stash he keeps somewhere in the bunker's thousands of rooms. Bless him.

Sam on the other hand, likes 'Butterfingers'. Says it's the orangy nuttiness that floats his boats and once he starts on them he can eat three, maybe four, at a go.

For Kevin it's 'Twix' in it's expensive-looking golden jacket, but even though it's 'made for sharing' with it's twin bars, don't expect a look-in. Our gentle prophet of the Lord is as aggressively partisan about his candy as any of us.

And Cas? Well, 'I'm just learning to be human' Cas likes a taste of everybody's. Yup, he doesn't really want anything to himself, he just wants a bite, piece, nibble or lick of anything going and though it'd be irritating from anyone else, we all let him bite, nibble and lick cause his face is a picture to behold as he discovers yet another treat that is immediately his 'favorite'.

So see Sam eating Dean's chockies when he had his own was bad enough but Dean would'a forgiven him...if'n Sam hadn't giggled when Dean made his displeasure known. Now this you might have assumed would immediately escalate into shouted curses and 'bring it on babe' and the battle-royal we now find ourselves happily embroiled in? Well indeed it did. Much shouting and pointing fingers and threats of violence ensued but surprisingly, after a while Dean backed down. Yeah, you heard me. Dean just stopped, then he humphed a bit, snagged one of Sam's 'Butterfingers' and walked away munching.

Which, though we didn't clock it at the time, was a master stroke, cause it lulled us all into a false sense of security and left poor, daft Sammy to tumble head first into Dean, the Master of Prank's, fiendish plot.

Lemme explain...

**Prank Number One**

It was two days after the great candy theft debacle. A slow sorta day. Dean was teaching Cas how to shell fresh peas. I know, a bit random but go figure, I guess they use frozen veges in Heaven and they were planning a pea and parmesan risotto for dinner.

And so the rest of us were lounging around reading and snoozing and internet surfing, when Kevin got the munchies.

"Dean?"

"Humm?"

Dean looked up distractedly from his careful supervision of his enthusiastic, but less-than-speedy sous-chef.

"What time are we eating dinner?"

Dean glanced at the clock but before he could speak Sam chimed in cheekily, nodding at Cas.

"Tomorrow, if Guy Fieri here has anything to do with it!"

And to our shame we all sniggered, except Dean. He just handed his willing minion another pea-pod and shook his head as much to say 'don't rise to it' before answering.

"About 8-ish, Kevin. Why?"

Our prophet glanced at the big clock...three hours to dinner, before chiming up.

"Candy time!"

And then he rose to his feet and went candy grabbing.

We keep the nommies in a number of places. The pantry as I mentioned for the non-chocolate treats as the cool, dry atmosphere does well for their hard shells but the chocolate goes in the fridge so it stays nice and crisp on the palette. No soft, warm choc for we connoisseurs.

So Kevin gathered a diverse selection and brought it to the table and we all greedily contemplated the treats.

Oh and big surprise. Guess what's sitting in the pile?

Yup you know it.

There, under the other candy was one forgotten but delicious little cup of nutty goodness. One of Dean's orgasmic Reece's delights that had escaped shifty Sam's snatch and grab.

And it would only have been fair for us all, but especially Sam, to leave it for the senior hunter. Yup, that'd been the grown up thing to do. Sure thing.

But what did Sam do...as Dean reached for the chocolate cup that was, we all knew, rightfully his?

He snatched it.

Yup. Used his gigantic, super long arm to stretch over Dean's reaching hand and snag the prize right out from under his brother's nose.

Kevin gasped a little, he hates conflict, makes him shaky and I was lens-locked with Cas our collective raised eyebrows exchanging an 'oh this isn't going to be pretty'.

And Sam ripped the paper, super-fast, from the sweet morsel and waggled it momentarily before his brother's wide green eyes. Eyes that were bright with...rage? Violence? Nope, neither of those but definitely something.

"Nom-nom-nom..."

Sam mumbled provocatively around the chocolate, smiling with all the cruelty of a gigantic, supposedly grown-up, little brother.

And then Dean...

Well Dean just...

Smiled.

Not just a grin but a huge, I-got-ya-sucker-and-so-fuck-you, smile and we all looked expectantly at Sam.

Oh and it was a picture. No really I wish ya had all been there. Sam's triumph leached away with each chew as Dean's grin escalated reciprocally.

"Garlic?"

Sam mumbled in disgust.

"Uh huh!"

Dean nodded happily, picking up the little paper candy wrapper and holding it on his hand.

"I found one you missed and hollowed it out from the bottom."

We all nodded and eye-widened at the elder Winchester's ingenuity as Sam gipped and choked on his inappropriately savory-sweet.

"Then I packed it with raw garlic and put it back into it's little case."

Dean beamed as Sam turned his back and spat into his hand, making noises that were not exactly pleasure-related.

"You know this means war, don't ya?"

Sam gagged around a distinct garlicky aroma.

"Bring it on, Bitch!"

Crowed Dean grinning in triumph.

And that's how it all went down.

So here endeth the first lesson my loyal followers and thus began the legendary bunker war.

Chapter ends


	21. Chapter 21 Prank Wars - Cherry Bomb!

A Moment with My Brother

Prank Wars - Cherry Bomb!

So if I'm honest Sam's retributive counter-strike was eagerly anticipated and widely praised, when it at last came to pass, by my Bunker housemates for it's pure slap-stick genius and, in a way, I too could appreciate it's comedic catharsis.

Well I would have, were it not for the disgustingly distracting slither of ice cold cherry slushie dripping from my hair to slide it's freezing fingers sensually down my neck and soak my favorite, pretty-pink, kitten t-shirt.

Crap, that's cold!

Sam had gone with the 'much loved by frat boys the world over', balance the bucket of water on the top of the door, thing. Only he'd spiced it up with the addition of thick, sticky, icy-cold, cherry slushie.

Oh and of course it was really meant for Dean. Retribution for the whole garlic candy primary battle of our wonderfully silly, utterly childish prank war.

But see Dean is, as we had previously noted, a master practitioner of all things stupid, an icon of irrational triviality, the king of crass obviousness and as such was on his guard for any and every retaliative come back.

And so it was, that without any of we less experienced pranksters becoming aware, Dean ensured he was just that moment behind one or other of us when any possibly booby-trapped package were needing opening, or, when the first spoonful out of the pan if Sam had warmed the soup for our lunch needed sampling, or when, as in this case, a cherry-bombed door needed carelessly passing through.

And thus, I stand and drip. Sticky and slightly annoyed as Kevin stares wide-eyed at Sam's careless audacity and Cas head-tilts his only-newly-human, slight confusion. Dean, for his part is biting his cheek so hard so as not to laugh that I'm sure he can taste copper but he knows better than to laugh especially since this slurpy sweet granita is really his and he knows cherry is soo not my favorite.

"Charlie..."

Sam's voice is weak and shaky, his face pale. Not 'the Trials nearly killed me', pale but more 'oh sh*t, I messed up big style and gooped my baby-sis, pale but my raised, slightly red and sugar-sticky palm halts the pathetically whimpered, start of an apology on his lips.

"Samuel Winchester..."

I seethe as I gather my dignity, which is a challenge, considering the progression of the corn-syrup calamity has now crested my lower back and is sneaking underneath the super-sexy laciness of my pastel panties.

Oopsie, T.M.I! But yuk, uncomfortable to say the least!

"Samuel Winchester. You will regret this."

My voice is measured and calm which is much scarier for Sam than any rage on my part would be and I see in his eyes that he would, at this moment, rather face a whole circus of freaky clowns than endure my apocalyptic and wilily feminine ire.

Chapter ends


	22. Chapter 22 Prank Wars - Moose Call

A Moment with My Brother

Prank Wars - Moose Call

"Deeean! Goddamn you!"

The distant call of the 'alces alces', the furiously-angered North American moose resonates deafeningly through our usually placid and peaceful bunker and because we are all at a warily constant, 'DefCon 3 - round house' status we scramble like a well-oiled machine and present ourselves with military precision in the library where our prank war initiator, Commander Dean, is currently residing.

He's is seated at the big table surrounded by small and costly looking little cogs and fly wheels and springs and shit. He's dismantling or maybe re-mantling (Is that a word? It may not be a word but ya know what I mean.) a big-ole clock he's no doubt found somewhere in the vast acreage of the MoL residency. He looks up as we all skid to a less than elegant stop and his face is amused but a tiny bit confused as Kevin, Cas and I watch him and await the arrival of our resident, and seemingly, effervescent elk

"What's up?"

The strangely innocent words are just out of his mouth as Sam's huge feet carry him in from the direction of his bedroom and from the stomp in his stride and the fire in his eye, it's clear to see that he's pissed!

"This is just damn-well low, Dean...I know you delight in being a dick but this is just so not funny..."

He's carrying a fist-full of crumpled denim in each hand and as Dean raises a bemused eyebrow, Sam throws the jeans onto the table, scattering the tiny, tic-toc puzzle-pieces to the corners of the room.

"Sam!"

Dean yells back and goes to rise but Sam has closed the gap between them and towers threateningly over his 'forced to remain seated', big brother.

"Be careful of the clock, can't ya?"

"The hell with the clock..."

Sam growls, grabbing at the cloth, pulling it along the table and flinging it carelessly into Dean's lap. The remaining nuts and bolts and balance wheels skitter to the floor and Kevin moves nervously to go gather the treasures. Sam's glance and louder growl however help him see the error of his ways and he stills, stepping a 'seeking-for-comfort' pace closer to Cas and they both work on perfecting their blend into the wall-paper personas.

"You know I don't have any other jeans and we sure as hell don't have any money for new ones..."

Sam spits and Dean's face is an adorable mixture of amusement, mixed with a health dollop of 'what the hell are you talking about? and just a hint of appropriate concern. Well let's face it, that much Moose monstering up in ya face would worry anyone who wasn't totally impervious to intimidation.

"Sammy..."

He barely gets the word out before Elk-Boy snorts and, stepping back tugs and pulls at the leg of his sweat pants as he glowers at his corralled sibling.

"Even my sweats, Dean? Come on, man. A joke's a joke but this is just...puerile!"

Our collective glance goes to the offending garment and thus we also take in the unnecessarily exposed ankle and inch or two of shin. It's a less than butch, "Golden-Girls', capri-pant sort of look and though Sam has a pretty calf we are all left in no doubt that it's not a look he's chosen for himself.

"And they're all like this, I don't have a descent pair left thanks to you..."

Sam rants, grabbing an example of the ruined denims from his brother's lap and holding the offending articles up so we can all see that his formerly moose-length pants are now better suited to the less than towering Prophet Tran's stature.

"Wasn't the damned garlic candy enough? I've promised never to take your chocolate again, haven't I? Why'd ya have to go do this?"

"Sammy, I..."

Dean's trying to get a word in edge-wise but the younger man is on a role and buts in over him.

"No! I don't wanna hear your excuses. You've gone too far this time."

Sam turns dramatically on his heels and storms from our presence, his truncated pant legs flapping at mid-calf length which kind of detracts from the dignity of his withdrawal and we let out a breath we have collectively been holding and stare uncomfortably at each other.

"So..."

Dean hoists the abbreviated strides from his lap and places them delicately on the big bunker table top and ushers us all to our seats. It's a bit like Camelot as we gather at the round (well technically it's not round but don't be a slave to your over literal tendencies!)

table.

"Who do I have to thank for that?"

For a moment we're all a bit too sheepish to speak...Well, Dean can be fairly intimidating himself when he does his disappointed parent thing. Yeesch! I'm not even gonna get into the psyche of what that could possibly mean!

But after a moment or two, there's a sorta soft, but distinctly gravelly cough.

"Ummm..."

Dean turns to face Cas, his eyes widening incrementally with surprise as the former angel squirms and shuffles.

"Cas?"

Dean's eyebrows are raised in that impossibly high arch that denotes an adorably innocent level of wonder at the antics of the newly welcomed to humanity and Castiel sighs in 'bang to rights' resignation.

"It was me, Dean. I admit it and I apologize that Sam interpreted my rash actions as yours."

Dean puts his hand to his face in bemusement but his eyes sparkle with amusement.

"But why?"

Cas does not respond immediately but chances a brief glance my way. I retain my neutrality and keep to my poker face.

"Did you just wanna join in the prank war?"

Incredulity colours Dean's voice. This is so un-Cas-like and we all know it. Hell, I can see Dean's not even convinced that Cas get's the concept of the jolly jape campaign.

"Umm..."

Cas stalls and he's looking a bit nervous, shifty, unsure...hell, spooked!

And I can't bear it any longer and crack.

"Urr, Dean?"

Those green as a forest morn eyes swivel to mine and I smile guiltily.

"Charlie..?"

Dean's voice has a little growl to it and it's my turn to squirm a little.

"Something you wanna say?"

Confession time.

"It wasn't Cas..."

I glance at the once-celestial-waveform and he smiles in relief as I press on.

"Well, it was in that he did the sewing, (No needles for me, I'm not domestic-goddess material!) but the idea was mine."

Dean 'hmms' and side-eye's his newly-human bud before looking back to me.

"Pay back for the slushie?"

I nod enthusiastically and he smiles a bit, though he sorta pretends not to.

"Don't worry. I'll 'fess up and tell Sam it was me."

I grin and Dean chuckles out.

"He knows you can't sew a stitch, he's gonna know Cas was in on it too."

I nod, recognizing the truth of it and I turn to face my unwitting accomplice.

"Sorry Cas, should-a told you what you were getting into."

The blue eyed man looks seriously at me and head-tilts first me, then Dean, then back to me.

Then he surprises us all.

"I believe the appropriate term here, Charlie is...Bring it on!"

chapter ends


End file.
